I did a quick search on the web: interesting that I could find very few videos of bullets being shot Long Range into ballistics gel to see how they performed at distances longer than 200 hundred yards.
I'm sure there are members on the forum that have a lot of Real-World (on game) experience with various bullet calibers, types and manufacturers.
That said, I have over the years done a lot of hunting, been on a lot of animal kills (and unfortunately animals shot and not recovered at all or several days after the shot) and have my own standards as to what type of bullet I'll use, and at what distance I'll take the shot.
I have seen the performance or lack thereof, of bullets that explode on impact. As a young hunter and reloader I bought some bullets to reload, tested on the range and shot a nice muley buck at just over 200 yards (270 Win, 130gr), just after daylight on some property my uncle owned. The buck took off after initially dropping. We let stayed put for about 30 minutes before tracking, and it took us hours before we were able to put a finishing shot into him. When we opened him up, we found the bullet had hit the back of the front leg bone and disintegrated. The damage would have eventually killed the buck, but I learned a great lesson about bullet performance, and relegated those bullets to the range practice and jackrabbit/coyote use only bin.
On the flip side, I shot a smaller buck with a bullet designed for long range (shot was 125 yards from a stand). I found a speck of blood and tracked the buck for several hundred yards before finding it dead. The bullet had punched through the ribcage hitting no bone, with an entry and exit wound hole the same size and a lot of blood inside the chest: not good blood trail to follow.
I am not married to one bullet type or brand.
I keep my shots under 600 yards in most all cases, and when I shoot at an animal at long range, it's not at a range longer than I practice, the animal calm, I have plenty of area around the animal to offer me a follow up shot if needed (or to see the animal drop) and at least one spotter who I trust to tell me impact and follow the animal in the scope/bino etc. I have passed on some nice animals because the criteria weren't met: full disclosure, I'm a meat hunter and since I can't eat the rack...
I have used with great success a variety of bullets like Partitions, Grand Slam, Accubonds TSX, e-Tips and SST, but don't always use the same bullets when hunting from a stand where my shots are likely to be closer, than I use when shots are typically going to be longer.
If I give advice to someone about bullets, I tell them the following:
-Use what shoots extremely accurate in your rifle.
-Use bullets that have known terminal performance on game animals and keep your shots to what you practice (if you don't practice shots to 500 yards in all kinds of conditions, don't shoot that distance in a hunting situation).
-Look at as many dead game animals as you can to see what the bullets did to them and ask as many questions as you can about conditions, distance, etc. so you can make an informed decision.
As has been pointed out by others, there is no magic bullet out there and while I make no claim to being particularly smart, I can't imagine it's even possible to build one that can do it all at all distances, at all angles, in all conditions, hitting bone or passthrough.
Ryan Furman says this about OWC/Ladder testing, and I believe the bullet situation is the same, "people want to get all emotional about a tiny group"... just because the bullet shoots tiny groups, doesn't mean it will kill effectively and efficiently all the time.
That was more than 2 cents: sorry for that, but many of you did pull out the popcorn and other snacks!
meat.
