Well, just to clear the air, when I started the post with my brother's picture, "another ballistic tip failure" I was being sarcastic.

Hopefully I will connect with some deer with my rifle on Sat, the opener of their gun season. Plan on hunting all weekend. A friend will be using one of my rifles and he will be taking either the tried and true 130 TSX 270, or my 30.06 with the 168 TSX. I'll tote the 270 loaded with 140 accubonds, or my 300 Ultra with 200 Accubonds.

I already took an elk with a 150 grain Hornady interlok from my 270. My next deer will be taken with a 165 grain corelokt out of my 308 and my next feral hog will be taken with the same or a 405 grain Remington soft point from my 45-70. No premiums here and no failures expected.

i guess the one of the points i was trying to make is that if you look around, you are going to find "failures" of every bullet made. if honest assessment were given, i would be willing to bet that most, the large majority, of these are situations where the bullet was being asked to do something that it wasn't designed to do, under conditions that it wasn't designed to perform in.

TasunkaWitko,
I was actually responding to your original post. I was just stating my humble opinion, and did not intend to respond to anyone personally.

That said, I tend to disagree with the direction this thread is taking. This year, for the first time in over 10 years, I lost a animal, a big mule deer buck. I normally only use the premiums, but due to circumstances this year, I did not have time for development, so I used my target load of a 150 grain ballistic silvertip out of a 308. I figured this was fine, because the rifle was accurate, and it was only a deer.
The shot was about 75 yards, and I thought I nailed him perfectly. He stumbled at the shot and then hopped on three legs behind some trees favoring his right front shoulder. I expected to find him there, but to my horror, he came out of there like he hadn't been hit. I spent 4 hours looking for him, but could never find him.
As I try to analyze what went wrong, my best guess was that I might have jerked the trigger, and hit him in the shoulder area, and the bullet blew up. This is only a guess, as when the gun went off, I expected a bullet through the heart.
This brings me to the point I was trying to make; that crap happens while hunting, and you cannot expect the situation to be ideal. I don't like the idea of a manufacture calling a bullet a hunting bullet, and then only have the bullet function under ideal conditions. I approach this as here are conditions, what bullet do they have that can perform under those conditions.
I agree that a premium bullet won't compensate for lousy shooting, but at the same time, the best bullets will perform when the shot is less than ideal.

It's funny, but, at least in my personal experience, premium bullets have never really been necessary on deer sized game. Oh, I shoot Partitions in my 280 Rem., but only because they've been so accurate and consistent year after year. The 140 gr. Sierra flat base bullets I used for years killed deer just as well.
I've killed soooo many head of hog and whitetail with "standard" bullets. One of my personal favorites is the good ol' Remington Cor-Lokt. I have in my possession a recovered .257" 100 gr. that I plunked into the shoulder point of a big whitetail buck that quartered toward me at around 240 yds. MV was 3200 fps and the little bullet held together like a trooper for a retained weight of around 65 grains. Mind you, that's Nosler Partition type retainage (65%). With that same "standard" bullet I whacked three feral hogs in about a 15 second span, each succumbing to one shot each. The Cor-Lok is the ONLY bullet I load in my little 308 Scout rifle. They're not incredibly accurate, but they penetrate and kill so well, I see no reason to use anything else.
Last year, my wife killed a nice West Texas 8 pt. with my 220 Swift and a 60 gr. Nosler Part., but in retrospect, that bullet, though it penetrated far better, killed no quicker than the 55 gr. Sierra SBT that I've used on 6 or 8 deer.
I suppose "failure" is a very objective term. The fact that my .35" 225 gr. Partition didn't exit on what I deemed a reasonable shot/angle, was a failure to me, but obviously OK to others.
Whelen

I think the problem lies in the belief that PREMIUM = ABLE TO KILL AT ANY ANGLE . This is no more true than NATURAL = SAFE . We have the most comprehensive selection of hunting bullets ever , practice is key , but failures will still occur . 2 cents

You can't count on the bullet always being perfectly placed when hunting. The late great Warren Page won several NRA marksmanship trophies, but I can show instances where he made bad shots, or missed shots. With that in mind, I want to know of these bullet failures because you won't hear about them from the manufacture. Any bullet will work with a perfectly placed shot, but where you really learn about a bullet is when the placement is not ideal. The bullets that perform here are the ones I am interested in. I agree that there is no magical - perfect bullet, but it won't stop me from trying to find it.

BTW, I noticed on the Nosler site that they now seperate their Ballistic Tips as Hunting and Varmint.