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Originally posted by 500grains:

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At what point in the animals death did the bullet fail?

This is typically written by someone who does not wish to invest some intellectual effort into understanding bullet performance.

Amen.

I read someone's tagline the other day that said something like "don't use "just enough gun" in the right circumstances, use enough gun in the wrong circumstances"

Replace that with bullet, and you can see the picture. The TSX is a great, though perhaps the extreme, of good bullet construction. There's nothing wrong with mosts bullets, if they perform in your gun and don't come to peices.

IMHO, 70% is the bare minimum of desired weight retention...

If your bullets are coming apart in your loads, either you have the wrong bullet or the wrong velocity.

For example, in a 35rem, the hornady 200gr RN is a great bullet... mushrooms nice, if you can find one. In a 358 winchester, it's a grenade.

jeffe

Let me preface this first with the caveat that I've hunted for over 45 years. Also, I've hunted mainly in areas where more than one big game species is available, multiple licenses are sometimes available, and near-by states also have game for me to hunt. (My department chair at the university wishes all this were not true...but she indulges me, bless her heart...and wants a few steaks.)
In my younger days (much, much younger), I was a high velocity nut and multi-load developer. After awhile, I came to the conclusion that trying to remember the different trajectories, etc., was a pain in the neck. Finding the best bullet in terminal performance first, accuracy next, and speed last has shown more success for me.
I DO have different rifles in different calibers and occasionally experiment with different bullets, trying to find the best load. Each rifle has a little note taped to the stock to refresh my memory. I concur with JJ and most of the comments as to bullet performance. Those that give me two holes have performed the best and resulted in fewer and shorter trailing experiences.
My job requires me to teach some introductory statistics and use statistics in research (yeah, I can lie...especially after a few shots around a campfire). What we have here with so many hunters is a good sampling of information, hopefully a good sampling of experience, and an ethic on improving our game-taking capabilities. I hope to learn even more than I've learned in the past.
Now, do we discuss which is better, Scotch or Bourbon?