I have preemptively donned my flame proof suit......
I know it's bragging but....between myself, family, friends, and guiding I have witnessed roughly 150 elk killed with rifles over the past 60 years (I started following my dad elk hunting as a kindergardner in the early 60's). Plus I have been in on the field dressing of another 50-60 elk. As Brad suggests it seems a lot of people don't really know what to look for in bullet performance.
In response to similar thread a couple years ago I had two longish conversations with people at Nosler.
The jacket thickness of BT's and AB's don't vary much if at all. Instead Nosler uses different lead hardnesss for the intended application and cartridge the bullet is used for. An example is the 7mm 150gr BT. It is made with the 7RM in mind and does indeed have a more hard lead than usual. Partition lead hardness varies from the front lead to the rear lead portion--that was news to me and something I had never considered before.
"Accubonds are good bullets but they're not Partitions" That's a quote from a late outfitter I guided with for nearly 35 years. The outfitter and his two sons all used 7RM's, and his sons got into longer range shooting and highish BC bullets. They convinced thier dad to try AB's too. He did try them for a few years, saw AB's used on other elk, but went back to his Partitions after a while saying they were more consistent in their performance.
And this is a common theme I see in these conventional bullet threads. Take the recent ELD-X thread. The first couple pages were full of very different results. One ELD-X was claimed to have traveled practically lengthwise through a moose and the another post claimed the ELD-X went splat and stopped in the first lung of a deer. Inconsistent performance among conventional lead core bullets is a common theme and something I have observed time and again, particularly on elk.
Given the info and experience I have some BT's and AB's are definitely better suited for elk, or big deer, than others. But they ain't Partitions. No use trying to make them Partitons when the bullet is easily available at roughly the same price.
Flame away.......
I mentioned an ELD-M that exited on a frontal shot on a big bull moose, but that was not an ELD-X. Very different bullet.
