I've always been confused by Berger hunting bullets and people that use them. What is the difference between their match bullets and hunting bullets? Jacket thickness? Maybe. The lead cores are not bonded to the jackets so what are we expecting them to do? If you shoot them at high enough velocity their going to grenade. Just like a match bullet. Why would anyone expect them to perform any differently than a match bullet? Maybe the jacket thickness causes a slightly exaggerated or retarded version of the other.
I do see people that want a bullet to dump all it's energy in an animal and cause as much damage as possible while other people want some form of controlled damage and penetration. So you could have some people that like hunting grenades. I personally don't like the damage to the meat. Especially on smaller animals like antelope where the tenderloins are tiny and don't even make a serving in a recipe. So you pretty much only have the 4 quarters, back strap, and maybe some neck meat. The flank meat is full of fat and doesn't cook well. So I don't even take it. When you're limited to the four quarters and back strap, why are you shooting them in the shoulders? Or high shoulder Lol. Damaging back strap and shoulder meat. Antelope aren't hard to kill. When I hunt antelope and whitetail in the east coast I pretty much just take the quarters and back strap from right where I shoot them and don't even open up the guts. No point.
After 11 years serving overseas I was able to start hunting again when I moved back to conus. I started hunting again on my father's farm and had a real nice 6.5 SAUM built when the GAP Extreme Hunters were popular. People where shooting 130gr JLKs at 2900 - 3000fps. I loaded some 7mm RSAUM brass with 130JLKs and took it whitetail hunting. It was slaughter fest. I shot one doe in the front quartering chest. The bullet traveled down the lengths of her body and blew up in the opposite rear hind quarter. Guts were a mess and the quarter was super damaged. I sold that gun and the next year used a 6 Creedmoor. I shot the Sierra 95gr TGKs at 3050fps. Shot a doe right behind the shoulder and the bullet grenaded on the ribs. The explosion blew a a silver dollar sized hole on the ribs and damaged all the inside shoulder meat in the armpit. When I had her hanging up you could see the heart hanging from it's natural connective tissues through that hole. The surface was abraded but there was no penetration. She required two shots to drop. I shot another die that same year in the head at about 60 yards. It looked like someone took an ice cream scoop and just scooped out her brains. There was a gory spray of pink brain bits in a triangle shaped spray pattern in the underbrush behind her. The same pink matter was hanging from tree branches 15 ft above where she stood. Ridiculous. So then I went to a bolt action 6.5 Grendel with 100gr Nosler BTs at 2720fps. That was perfect. Two years later I rebarreled the 6 Creedmoor to a short 6.5 Creedmoor and now use 120gr Speer Gold Dots at 2800. That is the perfect bullet and speed for killing whitetail without grenading meat unnecessarily. I'll still shoot 4 out of 5 deer in the head though. Quartering them and taking the back strap; not even messing with the guts.
Last year I shot a cow elk at 300yds right behind the shoulder. Perfect shot placement for the classic heart shot. I was shooting a 175gr ELDX out of a 7WSM at 2930. When I hit her she dropped her head and just started walking forward. The rest of the herd started moving as well. She intermixed with some other cows and then reversed direction. I hit her again on the other side in the same spot and she dropped. When I gutted her, the organs that were against the ribcage in the first side were torn up on the exterior but there was no penetration or massive mess. When we hung her up and pulled the hide off, you could see what happened. There was a two inch hole in the entrance. Right behind the shoulder, slightly higher than midway up. There was no exit from that shot. The second shot is what killed her. The first bullet hit a rib and exploded. Failed to penetrate and do damage to vital organs. Since I've switched to Barnes 168gr LRX. IMO, that's the problem with explosive bullets. You run the risk of exploding on the bone of a larger animal. On smaller deer you can assume some risk if you're bullet is large enough. (A 95gr 6mm isn't) But on a big boned animal you need the penetration that comes from a bonded core or a mono. Meat damage aside, the Berger bullets lack the penetration of a for-purpose hunting bullet that is designed for it's task by bonding the core to the jacket.
