I wouldn't shoot an elk with a normal 250gr SW to begin with, it is a deer bullet and if the shot hit the shoulder it would not be out of reason to under-penetrate.

This is why I just shake my head when people post or say that "that darn bullet, I made a perfect shot but it got away." Now, I have always lived in overpopulated deer areas so I have shot more than my fair share of whitetails -- I've lost count in the past few years but it must be over 125-150 by now. 80% of them with a muzzleloader, haven't hunted a single hunt with anything else in at least 5 years. I have shot the old HTP, XTP, 200 and 250 SW, QT, Keith Nose, and DC bullets. The one common factor is that a deer shot through the lungs with any bullet goes down within 200 yards.. 95% of them within 100 yds. It doesn't take a hand grenade exit wound to do it either, just a hole through the lungs. There are very few bullets out there I think are truly bad bullets.

If the deer is shot, and someone scours every inch within a 200yd circle and can't find it, I am extremely skeptical that they hit it where they say they did. I've helped recover enough "perfect shot" deer with holes from their stomach all the way to their rump to believe people can reliably judge a hit that well.

On whitetails, myself and all of my close hunting buddies shoot either the 200 or 250gr SW. None of us have lost a deer with them. But I would not use either on an elk, I am taking my Omega on an elk hunt this week so I went to the effort to re-sight the gun for an appropriate bullet.

It's the high lung shots that tend not to bleed, those are harder to track. If I cannot find blood for whatever reason, I break out the TP and mark whatever I can find. My first trick is to try to think like the deer, pick what I think their primary escape route would be, and go 100-200 yds down that first without even tracking. About 75% of the time I find the deer with no further effort -- wounded deer like to follow trails if they can and head for cover. No real tricks other than that.

If I am concerned with a blood trail, I would try to pick an over-expanding bullet like the Barnes Expander or a PR Keith Nose. I hunt a lot of open ground so a deer running 50 yds (most of mine don't go further than that) don't pose a recovery problem. In heavy woods I'd opt for a little more expansion. The Barnes Expander I have never shot from a ML though, I have used it in shotguns and seen it 1) ruin whole shoulders, and 2) fail to penetrate the shoulder blade of a small doe, exploded on the surface.