Evidently the reputation of the early Ballistic Tips lives on in some places, and the people that still harbor a grudge can't tell the difference between bullet performance and shooter performance.
I've shot a lot of Ballistic Tips from .25 to .338 and .375 into various animals over the past decade and they all worked just fine, with more than enough penetration for the job at hand. Anybody who wounds and loses an elk with the 200-grain .338 BT made a really lousy shot.
I kinda' figured you would weigh in and chide me.........
Don't assume the BT's were bad hits--they weren't.
But if all I had to go on were performance of BT's from almost 25 years ago, that would be one thing--but it ain't.
I spent practically a full extra day packing elk meat out of a canyon in NM when a client made a dead on shot on a nice bull at 200 yds with a 180gr BT handload out of a 300WM, that bull ran 75 yards to the rim and stumbled, bumbled and tumbled clear to the bottom. That was three years ago.
I've seen roughly a dozen elk killed with BT's since they appeared, most in the last 10 years--there has been a chase of some sort with every one. For better or worse, they don't penetrate very well when me and my karma are present.....
I have an entertaining story with the early BT's, but it would read like a novelette
Casey
