Of the 3 animals I shot this year, 2 were shot with the relatively cheap Federal Power-Shok bullets. On those 2, both bullets were placed right behind the front shoulder on a broadside and a quartering away shot. Both bullets were basically clean pass throughs with what appeared to be good expansion and the bullets appeared to stay together very well. I didn't do any inspection of the internal organs as I quartered out both animals without field dressing them. Both animals ran about 40 yards with double lung penetration before falling dead.

I used a winchester ballistic silvertips on one animal and it was an antelope at 200 yards. I made a poor shot and hit it in the lower neck and the bullet performed as well as expected with pretty much a complete fragmentation however there was a significant exit wound and the animal dropped in it's tracks. The exit wound was larger than my fist. Not sure how much of that was caused by bullet fragments and how much was bone fragments because the spine was completely severed.

Would that bullet have been a failure if I hit the animal in the front shoulder? Probably not. There may not have been an exit wound but I doubtthe animalwould have gone very far.

I'm of the opinion that most bullets are going to be effective on medium sized game if you are shooting a decent caliber.

Would I use a ballistic tip on an Elk? No. There are several better choices out there in my opinion.

Will I be buying any more ballistic tip bullets? Possibly. I think they are a very good choice for antelope with the high potential for long range shots. I don't think they are worth the extra $ over the cheaper ammo like the federal power-shoks or winchester's power points for deer though.

That's my 2 cents.