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...Well said and precisely why I prefer lead core bullets. The coppers may look pretty and dig deep, but that's about all they have over lead cores. For shorter tracking jobs and good blood trials, I'll take lead cord bullets every time.
The quickest elk kill that I ever made was a big 6x6 bull that I shot in one of the Montana Unlimited Bighorn Sheep areas just north of Yellowstone Park. I had backpacked into the unit hunting sheep, so the rifle that I took was my .257 Ackley shooting 117 grain Sierra GameKing bullets.
By the last day that I had scheduled for that hunt I hadn't seen any rams, so when this bull came toward me through the timber bugling, I couldn't resist. He stopped broadside about 75 yards from me and I put one of those little 117 grain Sierras just behind his front shoulder. The bullet went through a rib bone and shredded his lungs, and didn't exit his chest cavity. He simply collapsed dead in his tracks.
The first bull elk that I killed with a Barnes bullet I shot with a 168 grain TSX from my .300 Weatherby. I had spotted the bull and some cows feeding up a hill. I stalked around the hill to about 100 yards to the side of the herd. When the bull stepped into the open, I put the TSX bullet just behind his shoulder and it exited behind his opposite shoulder. At the hit, he spun around 180 degrees, jumped two steps and fell dead.
When I walked up to where he was standing when I shot him, there was blood splattered all over the snow for 15 feet out on both sides of where he was standing and where he ran.
On these two elk, the little cup and core bullet made the shortest tracking, and the mono copper bullet made a 30' wide blood trail.
In the picture that I posted of my Mozambique leopard, the big spot in the center of his right shoulder is where the 168 grain TTSX went into him. It exited just behind his other shoulder. When we went in after him at 12:30 AM, we didn't really see a blood trail, but that was moot as he was lying dead in the open creek bed only 19 paces from where I had shot him.
I think the length of tracking has more to do with bullet placement than bullet construction.
