The only shot i take on a whitetail is straight through the front shoulder. I have seen first hand what balistic tips do and i never use them. We have shoulder bone pieces of when people that came up to our place and shot deer stratight in the shoulder and it would explode on impact and would loose the deer. I use Barnes XLC through my 270 win and it drops them like a safe. Barnes is the ONLY bullet i would use for deer from now on.