path,
You'll have to be more specific. Ranges, animals, and cartridges/bullets vary. It doesn't make much sense for me to type and post a big list. What observations are you getting at here?
Maybe four that stand out. I'm more curious where you found BC to be really important. My "long range" shots on game are limited to three or four (so I'm looking to learn) but in all cases I found BC to be relatively unimportant. Case in point the longest was with a 270 Win at just over 560 yds with a 130 TSX. Not exactly a slippery bullet.
A few instances come to mind, but before I go into detail it's important to point out that any shot taken on game should come only after we've practiced so exhaustively that we will make our shot 9-10 times out of 10, regardless of the cartridge/bullet combo we're using. Having said that, high-BC/velocity combos take less work, practice, and skill to use effectively with, say, a 90% confidence interval. With a bullet that is blown off of the vital zone by a 3 mph wind change, let's just say it takes 2000 rounds of practice shooting in variable winds to be able to call the correction with 90% certainty to within 3 mph. With a higher BC bullet and more speed, maybe it takes a 6 mph wind change to have the same effect. So maybe you can learn to call wind within 6 mph with only 600 rounds of practice at the distance in question.
Having said that, I shot a sheep in the mountains where wind is very difficult to detect as it blows between outcroppings. The shot was at 415 yards and I was using a .25-06 at 100gr MK. I was able to successfully call the wind well enough that 2 shots hit right behind the shoulder. I also shot a coyote at 942 yards using the same bullet, and both of those shots were the result of sending lots and lots of 100 MK downrange, and relatively little wind. If there had been much wind for either of those shots, I would have wished I had a more aerodynamic bullet.
Recently a friend and I were hunting elk in terrain that is also difficult to judge wind in, due to minimal vegetation, and topographical features are the primary source of wind indication. A couple of shots were made with a 7WSM and 162AM that could have turned out badly if I were using something less wind-impervious. The first was at 532 meters and was taken on a cow that was quartering away steeply. The bullet went were I wanted it to go. A minute later my friend fired a 208 AM at another cow in the herd, and a gust of wind came up right at the shot. The bullet entered the liver. As we approached the elk to finish it, she detected us from over 750 meters, then got up and started to run away. A 162 AM hit her in the rear quarters, exiting behind the offside shoulder. There was a significant amount of wind and combined with the lead required to hit her on the run, I was glad to be using the 162 instead of a bullet that may have been blown 6" off course by the wind. Likewise, if a gust of wind had kicked up during the shot on the first cow, the bullet may still have stayed on course, when a lesser bullet may have resulted in a wounding shot.
There have been several others using other chamberings and bullets, and in each case I had to consider the distance of the shot, the shot presentation of the animal, the wind behaviour, as well as the bullet I was shooting and the amount of practice I had done previously with that bullet. If the wind was too much for a given bullet, I had to call it a no shot as where I may have taken the shot with a more resilient bullet. The only way to see how badly a bullet is affected by the wind is to do a lot of shooting at targets in various winds. I can tell you that I would be confident shooting in worse winds using that 7WSM/162AM combo than I would a .308/150SP combo.
I'm not advocating that BC is THE only factor to consider in bullet selection, as I am also a big TTSX user, but when we're talking about shots in the wind beyond 400 yards, BC starts to give a marked advantage. That is easy to see if you take a few chamberings/bullets out on a windy day and compare them on steel side-by-side.
