This sounds like typical Nosler performance, as it penetrated 3.5 feet of deer meat, with a .300 at 100 yards it doen't get any better than this. If you'd taken your shot at 300 yards, expansion would have been a lot less with the .300 and it would have been likely to have exited then. Don't get too worked up about bullet performance such as this, it worked as designed.

Bulletproof,

The Nosler Partition performed EXACTLY as is supposed to, and the deer died in a textbook manner. I killed an elk with a .243W (long story how I ended up using a .243 for elk hunting) at75 yards under the identical situation you described--with identical results. I found the bullet buried deep in the off shoulder with the front portion of the lead wiped off--just like every other Partition I've recovered.

Casey

Here's a picture of the remains of a 180 gr Nosler Partition fired from a .300 Win Mag at about 3000 fps. The bull moose it killed was running almost straight away at 25-30 yds when the bullet struck, breaking the rear two ribs on the left side and angling through the lungs. I found the bullet under the hide on the right front ahead of the shoulder. Penetration was about 4 feet.

The bulls momentum kept him going for +/- 50 feet. Not a classic mushroom but the moose was dead when he hit the ground