Partitioned rounds do not need to be nominally placed. The way the bullet design works makes it an all purpose killing round. All you need to do is get in the same bread box as any other effective hunting round.

They are no better than some of the other mentioned rounds. All of the more modern hunting rounds are so close to one another in regards to effectiveness once they hit the target it really does not matter which you use.

What matters more is your guns ability to make the round go where you need it to, and your confidence in that chosen round.

show me where your research says the jacket thicknesses are different and softer lead is used, according to my sources at nosler, the 150's and 168's use the same jacket cup so the 150 would have the thickest jacket, and they use the same antimoney amount in the lead cores.
I've shot a ton on deer with BT's, if you lost 2 wall hangers, wasn't the fault of the bullet.
RR


RR, here is one example of what I found reading up on BST's. Go to Google and type in "Winchester Ballistic Silvertip failure" and you'll find plenty people bitchin bout em. I'm not gonna bitch about em anymore, just not gonna use em for anything more than coyotes till I finish off the last three boxes. If you shoot as many deer as you say, you'll eventually run into this situation. Maybe you have small deer where you hunt. Bottom line is, I'm not using them anymore. And if you didn't see the evidence, how do you know it wasn't the fault of the bullet? Anyway, if you get bored, just type in what I said and good reading!

http://wassonhuntingservices.com/php...pic.php?t=2928

I shoot the 270 WSM and found that the Silver BT was the best bullet type I had to choose from to keep deer intacted so I could butcher therm. I had a choise between Accubounds and SBT and the accubounds would blow the heck out of the deer on exit. They were great for Moose but way over kill for deer. Since I changed the SBT performs every bit as good and is the perfect exit on any deer I've taken and I have taken a number of them with it....

Using a 150gr Ballistic Silvertip in .308, I have only shot one deer but had good result. The deer was quatering away hard at about 20 yards, and rolled over into the prone position to get the shot. I fired and he ran 10-15 yards and collapsed. When I recovered him, I found the entrance wound at the rear of the rib cage (exactly where I aimed) and the exit wound through the shoulder. Due to the angle of the shot, the entrace wound was about the size of a baseball and obliterated the ribs. The exit wound was much smaller, due to the fragmentation of the bullet, but made it through the shoulder blade just fine.

Even though my experince with them is limited to this one kill, I would not hesitate to use them again. Although, once I start reloading, I will switch to the Speer DeepCurls. I use them in my muzzleloader (which is what I normally hunt with), and they are absolutely devastating with no fragmentation.

I have recovered several Winchester Ballistic Silvertip .30-06 150grn bullets from KS whitetails over the last 12-14yrs. I started using them sometime in '98 or '99, and haven't used any other load in my ol' standby .30-06 since then. At the time, I was looking for ONE load to suit for deer, hogs, and coyotes, the BST's delivered. The first deer I dropped was a doe at 383yrds (lasered). The wound tract looked like a standard softpoint tract at 100yrds.

That said, I HAVE had a few bullet failures. Within the first year of using this round, I hit a doe at about 60yrds cleanly right behind the shoulder. I could SEE the entry wound in my scope as I tried to get a 2nd shot on her, but I failed to connect on the follow up shot. The entry wound looked shallow, and about the size of a baseball. I tracked blood for a half mile before I lost her trail. Fast forward over a decade, and I hit a doe this winter quartering towards at 40ft (ft, not yrds). I could have used a ladle to field dress her, I cut her trachea and anus, and everything else poured out like jelly. I have hit 2 other deer with these under 50yrds, and honestly, it's good that I don't try to use rib meat, because everything in their chest cavity was shredded. I hit a badger at about 6ft this winter in the neck. The exit wound was the size of a baseball... Through a badger's neck...

What's amazing about them is that they still do their job very well at long range. Yes, they're prone to breaking up at under 100yrds, but I've only had that one deer that made it more than 50yrds. On the other hand, I've hit over a handful of deer over 400yrds with these babies and I get either DRT's or 30-50yrd runners. It's a high trauma round.

Frankly, they're probably too frangible for deer at anything under 75yrds. They're a pretty thin jacket, but the jacket stays pretty well intact. The BAD part, at least for deer hunting, or the GOOD part for coyotes, is that the jacket and core almost ALWAYS separate. You WILL end up with jacket and core frags scattered all over. Oddly enough, I've recovered several jackets, even on deer with substantial exit wounds. I guess that means the core is exiting, but the "petaled" jacket isn't.

They're VERY accurate, and if you pick your shots carefully to avoid meat damage, you'll love them. Never shoot a deer facing you though, because it's going to look like it got hit by a train.

I've hit two deer under 75 yards. One at 45, and one at 60. Both are dead.

The thing that matters with the closer shots is hitting bone. You hit bone and you get guaranteed fragmentation. It's why aiming for the breadbasket or neck is important. You are more likely to hit something hard enough to cause the bullet to expand at close range causing traumatic damage.

I shot my first buck in the back at 45 yards, and then through the gut at 15 yards (it was in a full run at the time). The bullet made clean exit with no expansion at 15 yards. A through and through shot.

I hit no bone, and was too close to the deer to have it fragment properly without help. I did not know it at the time, but my first shot was kill shot. The buck ran the 45 yards back to my tree and died. It was a good thing I made a good first shot, because the second shot provided valuable insight to the round itself while doing nothing to help make the kill.

If you are closer to the deer, I agree that you need to aim somewhere with enough mass to force the bullet to break apart. It's the one "weakness" of the round. An odd thing to say.