Overall, I consider my experience somewhat limited. For pronghorn, I have either myself shot, or been a spotter for somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 pronghorn, in the last 5 years, taken with match bullets exclusively, the vast majority being Bergers, 6.5 140 VLD-H's, 6.5 156 EOL's, 7mm 180 VLD-H's, and .277 170 EOL's. I did also test out the Hornady 6.5 147 ELD-M's with moderate success, 13 animals total taken, and was less impressed with them then any of the Bergers. They were less consistent. With the Bergers, out of all of those, there was literally only one I can remember that ran more than 10 yards, it was heart shot just over 700 yards, it ran about 60ish yards in a death sprint, shot with a 180 vld-h out of a 7 mag.
Add in deer and elk, and it adds around 15-20 more animals with match bullets, all shot with the same bullets listed. The Bergers terminal performance on all were fantastic. The elk tend to travel a little farther, not as many bang-flops, but most were less than 50 yards, with three that traveled between 50 and 150 yards, one was a large bull, traveled around 150 yards after hit mid lung with a 180 VLD, another was a raghorn bull traveled around 60 yards down hill, and the other was an adult cow elk that traveled steeply down hill about 80 yards before she came to rest in the bottom of a drainage. I did have a poor experience with a cow elk shot with the 147 eld-m, I have the shot on video showing the animals stance and reaction to the shot, as well as photo's of the entrance of the bullet after I recovered the cow that traveled around a mile. The bullet did minimal damage internally, did not exit and left zero blood trail, I tracker her by her tracks in the 3 day old snow. Though the bullet itself looked good as far as expansion, where I found the bullet under the skin on the off side suggest after impact, it changed course and diverted to the rear of the animal, only taking out the rear of the close side lung, then traveling through the paunch, and resting under the skin in the flank. Again, the video shows the animal was only slightly quartered, and the photo of the entrance hole shows that this is not the path the bullet should have taken if it penetrated in a strait line. So, I won't use the 147's any more, however, I give the Bergers that I have used a full nod. This is derived from terminal performance witnessed on approximately mid 60's number of animals taken with them.
I will add in, while the light thin skinned pronghorn shots ranged from 100 yards out to 980 yards, only one elk and none of the deer were shot under roughly 500 yards, so I have very limited testing with high velocity impacts from match type bullets on bigger heavier animals such as elk and heavier bodied deer. For my timber gun, I use a more conventional hunting bullet, Speer Hot Core out of a short handy .308 win being one of my favorites for this use. Shots with this gun would pretty much exclusively be under 250-300 yards for it's use.
Honestly, I do not believe there is a bullet that performs perfect at all ranges, all game. A bullet that will get full penetration on a big bull elk at 50 yards and have good terminal performance, will very possibly have poor external ballistic performance due to low bc, and will likely do minimal damage with a shot through the ribs/lungs on a pronghorn at 900 yards. On the other hand, a bullet with a high bc that will reliably expand and do heavy damage to the vitals with the same 900 yard shot on a pronghorn, may have issues with a 50 yard shot on a big elk if your shot has to pass through the heaviest muscle/heavy bone portion of the shoulder.
In other words, pick a bullet for the style you hunt. High bc isn't really all that necessary until your shots start to stretch past 500-600 yards consistently.
bergerbullets.com
