Sometime between 2000 and 2005 I had 4 Sierra BTHPs, 2x .243" and 2x .257", come apart on impact, resulting in no parts of the bullets penetrating through the rib cage and into the pleural cavity. The damage in all 4 cases was a shallow wound that disintegrated a piece of hide between saucer and dinner plate size and tearing the remaining hide from the body for up to 1' from the POI. The fact that it happened x4 is what soured me on this style of bullet for shooting deer. Prior to those 4 failures, I'd shot at least 50 deer with them, all being 1-shot kills, but I never recovered much more than bullet fragments from those animals, so I limited my POA to behind the shoulder or the neck, locations that required minimal penetration. As with many things, YMMV.
I still shoot Sierra BTHPs in .243" and .257", but not at deer and not nearly as many as I had in the previous 20+/- years.
Jeff
