bigngreen: "When we were seeing 100-300 plus elk kills a season the first two seasons we saw a third of the bullets placed on front shoulders not penetrate into the chest cavity but stop or turn, I've done a mag dump on more elk when I was shooting Barnes than any other bullet, I though it was normal to have to hit elk repetitively till I started shooting heavy for cal cup and core or even heavy for cal copper in faster twist barrel, it was a stark change when I quite Barnes, every time I pulled the trigger elk just started wobbling and dropping no more running with front legs packing or windmilling, no more shooting and having them stand there like your just making noise. I still shoot them sometimes for deer and varmints but never again on heavy game!!"
Sorry for the confusion! Thought that I had the quote with my post!
Your experiences are certainly an anomaly! Perhaps you completely "bought-in" to the "speed kills" philosophy. While with a mono-bullet, you can (though I prefer not) drop a bit in bullet weight....you can "quickly" reach a point of diminishing returns. High velocity (light bullet), light bullet (less mass), violent expansion ( product of high velocity impact), when combined....equals less penetration.
Though.....even that fails to explain your abysmal failures. So.... we're back to "consistant", "repeated", anomaly!