Have found the ABLR's relatively easy to "tune" in a good rifle, usually by seating 'em deeper.
They generally retain around 50% of their weight, plus or minus 10%, depending on impact velocity. This is about like some other bullets that are well-respected on the Campfire, such as the Hornady Interlock Spire Point.
But any bullet that loses half its weight does indeed partially "fragment," so am not amazed that some hunters are finding bullet fragments after shooting big game with ABLR's. In fact I'm not amazed when finding "fragments" of just about any expanding bullet, even some that supposedly don't fragment. This is about as astonishing as the fact that fire is hot.
Have also noticed over the years that bullet fragments are generally found in dead animals. The overall trend is the more fragmentation, the quicker the animal dies, as long as the bullet penetrated through vital tissue.
But apparently the "modern" notion is that any fragmentation is bad, and only bullets that retain all their weight, or exit, kill well.
I was making assumptions. I was considering fragmentation more along the line of the "disintegration" originally mentioned in the post, which to me is "there's nothing left but parts of the jacket and no solid core left, even separated"....an assumption on my part. I'd also assumed that the man who did the butchering was a processor who often processed shot game and would have been familiar with the usual bits and pieces left behind by most bullets but that this was different enough for him to comment. .....again, an assumption on my part.
