"I know that the boattails give you better down range accuracy and stuff but do they hurt penetration at short range??? "

Boattail bullets have a slight ranging advantage over flatbase bullets, but this is totally insignificant for ranges under 700 to 800 yards - in other words, the difference is meaningless inall but the most specialized applications, such as 1,000 yard target shooting. Very few hunters would ever need this added capability. Whethera bullet shoots accurately from your rifle is not necessarily affected by whether or not it has a boattail.

As for giving better accuracy, they don't. As a matter of fact, it is often the case that a flat-base bullet will give better grouping than a boattail, particularly if the twist of the rifling in a specific rifle is marginal for the length of the bullet in use, since the boat-tail makes a bullet longer,necessitatinga faster twist to stabilize it.

In some boattail designs, the tapered inside of the rear of the jacket does make a non-bondedcore more prone to separate on impact. This does not apply to bullets like the Nosler BT since the heel is solid and the rear portion of the core is falt, not tapered into the boattail. Naturally,the Barnes bullets made of one metal can't lose theircores!

If you want a goodbullet with a nonslipping core, useAccubonds or something else made the same way. But for hunting, don't be too concerned whether your bullet has a boatail or not.