I got on the premium ammo train a few years back like everyone seems to be doing nowadays, I always used remington core lokts in my 308 and have always had good performance and accuracy with them and every deer ive shot with them ran no more the 30 or 40 yards with good thick blood trails execpt my very first deer i shot at was a horrible quartering shot and all i hit was its hind left leg in the thigh with a core lokt it ran a 1/4 mile before i found it. But one year I decided to use some quote premium ammo, Winchester ballistic silvertips because a salesman convinced me that they were "so much better" then what i was using.
on the range my core lokts held tighter groups then the silvertips did but i decided to use them anyway because i was thinking it was pushing a better bullet. The deer i shot with the ballistic silvertips was a 50 yard quartering shot with no good shots openings to the vitals i decided to go for a neck shot i pulled the trigger and the deer cart wheeled forward landed on its back got up ran 10 yards and collapsed. I was thinking wow these bullets really are kick butt i never had a deer do that before, I inspected the deers neck for an entrance but never found one though there was a heck of a exit hole in the front of its neck while field dressing the deer I noticed where the bullet went in, it hit low I had what they call a texas heart shot on my hands what mess that ballsitic tip turned all of its insides into bloody stinking mess of bowls blood and guts. I suppose i cant blame the bullet but after that I went back to core lokts and have killed 5 deer with them since. I still have 2 full boxes of winchester 168 grain ballistic silvertips I never intend to use I figured i might pop them off for the brass to reload them but at 25 dollars a box that I spent i cant push myself to do that.