You know? I used to be a big fan of ballistic tips for game up to deer size. In fact, I've even taken a deer sucessfully with a BT and thought they were just fine for deer.

That changed this year.

My sister-in-law got a 181-class mule deer with her .308 a couple weeks ago. She made some poor hits on the buck (2 hits in both back legs) but eventually slowed him down. She made 1 more shot, that upon initial inspection, looked like a perfect shot through the shoulder into about where the heart would be. She stated the buck kept going after that shot and she had to shoot him in the neck to finish him.

When we skinned him out you could see how the bullet failed. She'd hit the leg bone of the front shoulder. The bullet broke the bone but never even penetrated past the leg. There were no pieces that made it through the leg at all, zero, zilch. If she'd been using a better bullet he'd most likely died at that shot.

Like I said before, I have always been a fan of the ballistic tips but after seeing this I've lost any confidence in using them for deer or larger game. Oh, the shot was about 120 yards away so we can't really blame ultra-high velocity I'm afraid.

I guess I'm glad I switched to Accubonds in my 7mm this year.