Would be interested to hear a few more details, twist, velocity, range, and how did they fail? And also, had you done anything to the bullets or just shoot them out of the box? Myself and my family/friends kill a lot of things with Bergers (roughly 15-20 big game a year), so when I hear of a failure I want to know what happened so I can do my best to prevent it from happening to me....
That's very unfortunate, how far was the shot???
Thought I'd respond to you both at once.
My bull was just shy of 700 yards, the first shot was slightly quartered away so I put it right behind the lungs. That bullet fragmented to bits on the ribs and only penetrated a few inches.
Shot 2 was taken as the bull started turning and I hit him right at the neck shoulder junction, the bullet passed through without expanding and actually clipped a vertebrae, exit hole was pretty much .308.
After that he ran off into the timber, and luckily I spotted him about 15 minutes later in a small opening at 650 yards.
I sent one right behind the shoulder and it put him down with pretty good expansion, although explosive.. I couldn't see anything but fragments of lead and jacket.
I don't drill out tips, maybe that would have kept the one from pencilling. Who knows though it might have gotten smashed shut from recoil in the mag..
What I found even more disturbing last season was watching a guy shoot a bull center shoulder with a 300 EH from a Lapua improved at 800 yards, that bullet blew apart and failed to make it through the shoulder.
He tracked him 2 miles the next day and got him.
I saw the pics of the shoulder when I met him at our trucks that evening, pretty bad.
After these experiences I'll be hunting with bonded bullets or monos only