ORIGINAL: mossy33oak
well, I know the debate on here has been quite controversial with ballistic tips and hunting so I thought Id share my story. I hunted Minnesota's opening day of rifle season this past Sat and harvested an impressive (for me anyway) 235 lb whitetail. I did not have the perfect broadside standing still shot we all like to have but I still made a lethal shot that dropped him where he stood. I've heard all the stories about "Ballistic tips fragment too easy" yada yada yada. Well I found out first hand that you can shoot a 200+ lb deer in the shoulder quartering to you and still drive the bullet down through the vitals, and exit near the last rib on the other side. I understand that some people may have gotten a "bad" bullet but to say "ALL" ballistic tips will not perform on deer sized game IMHO has been disproved. I shot this deer with my 7mm Rem mag with 140 gr Nosler BT, and 66.5 gr of RL 22 at 161 yards
Your BT did it's job. They are designed for radical exspansion at longer ranges.
I don't anyone can seriously say that they can't kill deer but they consistently don't perform as well under most conditions as other "big game" bullets like the partition etc.
In case you didn't know you don't want your bullet to exit at all. You want it to expand and transfer all of it's energy into the target while at the same time tearing as large a wound profile as possible. A perfect performance would have meant you would have found your bullet lodged against the opposite side somewhere.
BTs are ok for thin skinned game but by are no means the best choice nor should they be protrayed as such.