Muley, of course they hold together....Well... at least enough to get the job done very effectively. Those Barnes 225gr XPs were very popular with ULA owners who shoot them at well over 2200fps.

So what if a petal or two shears off. The base still weighs in at around 200 grains. This is assuming it will react on game in a similar fashion. I doubt it will most of the time. Water jugs tests are very hard on many types of bullets...Its a torture test of sorts.

The only copper Barnes i totally avoid now are the 285gr Spitfire and the 460S&W 275gr XPB. The 285gr has given me some accuracy issues and on one occasion appeared to have very little expansion on a deer i shot. It was a near text book broadside. The 275gr XPB shoots great for me but ive seen it fail to expand for me and for another person on media. If it wont expand reliably in water or gel, its probably not going to expand reliably on game either.

To me the jury is still out on the Federals. I would not use them for long range any way. The BC is pitiful. Just because it shed a petal at very high impact speed means very little to me. It would be interesting to replicate in gel with a very high quality slow motion camera.

What kind of temporary and permanent would channel did it leave? Did it tumble ect ect ect?

My WAG atm is the copper/zinc alloy is a bit too hard because it was not annealed correctly. It might be harder than the Hornady MonoFlex. Both are guilding metal IIRC which by definition is 95% copper and 5% zinc. I dont even know if that is truly the case with the Federal.