The online accounts of consistently great performance manyclaim to get out of ballistic tips on deer and even bigger game animals is one of those odd things in life that make me feel like I've been hunting in a another dimension of space time. Why? Because the results I've seen from them are anything but consistent. Very few people I know still use them on even deer sized game and most people I know actively hate them. I bet 80 percent of the wounded and lost deer horror stories I have heard or been involved in over the past 10 years involved a ballistic tip bullet. The main difference I'veexperienced from the online accounts I read is in the area of penetration. I see these accounts that say, " I've shot 442 deer with ballistic tips and all but 3 exited; why one pentrated a 330 lb deer from @$$ to nose, exited the left nostril; went through 4 pine trees crossed onto a military base; hit an M1A1 Abrams tank, blew throught the plate armor on one side and lodged in the offside track retaining 92% of it's original weight. (okay I'm exaggerating a bit but you get the idea) Well, all I can say is that they must be shipping a different version to you guys than the one they are selling us down here in south Alabama. I had 3 cousins and an uncle who usedballistic tips in their270s and 7mm mags for years. I also had multple friends who used them and I shot a few deer with them. They killed a lot of deer with them (although they have all soured on them now) but even on broadside shots I'd say they exited less than 50 percent of the time. And on any kind of angled shot they almost never exited. And our Alabama deer are not that big either. Hell, I thought that was the reason why some people like them. Because they don't exit. The few people I know that love these things are huge fans of the energy dump theory of terminal ballistics and use ballistic tips precisely because of their rapid violent fragment prone expansion.

In my experience withballistic tipsI'll say this: if you are willing to wait for perfect broadside shots and keep your bullet placement in the ribs behind the shoulder you will probably never have a problem. But shouder hits, frontal shots or sharp quartering shots are a roll of the dice and will eventually send you home will nothing but a bad memory of a sparce blood trail ending at nothing. And dear God are they meat manglers. I mean they are basically just hollow points with a plastic nipple. And why is a bullet given a hollow point? To facilitate rapid expansion.

When I carry a bow into the woods I am content to wait for perfect shot angles. I consider it part of the challenge of bow hunting. But whenI carry a rifle in the woods I want a bullet Ican trust to drive throughto the vitals on a less perfect shot angle. Me personally, I have zero confidence in ballistic tips to be that bullet.