A little late....
The reason that Hornady no longer advertises the AMAX for hunting (as they once did) has absolutely nothing to do with performance in game, and everything to do with certain entities using Hornady Match ammo/bullets to kill bipedals.
Read that again. Now one more time.
Quite the opposite, most are tested specifically for terminal effects and tailored/tweaked to perform within certain parameters.
Read that again. Now one more time.
That'd not be a guess.
Amax's are no different than any other bullet. They all have different tendencies based on caliber and weight. There are certainly Amax's that "I" wouldn't choose to use on deer and diffidently on elk, but there are some that I would without hesitation.
People act as if terminal performance (how a bullet acts in tissue) is somehow magical. It is not. It is a known and quantified subject. There are certain parameters and terms that are used, however suffice to say that terminal performance is simply- how deep a bullet penetrates, how wide the wound channel is, and how consistently those two things are done while going through barriers (bone being a barrier). Once sufficient penetration has been reached, the wider the wound channel the faster the kill. Given same vitals impacted (no CNS), and sufficient penetration a BallisticTip will kill faster than a Barnes. Simply due to the wider wound.
For my use, I want a bullet to penetrate from the onside back of ribs to the offside shoulder of whatever game I am hunting. Preferably with an exit, however that is not mandatory. For smaller southern deer that means 16-20 inches of penetration. That means potentially a bit of intestine, liver, lungs, ribs into shoulder. On top of that I want the bullet that consistently produces the widest wound channel along those 16-20 inches.
No matter the game I generally want those same parameters. Lots and lots of bullets meet the penetration requirements, few meet the wound channel diameter requirement. Very, very, very few match the right AMAX in that regard.
Despite popular (un)informed thought, I would absolutely rather have a bullet meeting the above standards than a "deep" penetrator such as a Barns or Hornady GMX, when shooting an animal in the hips either from the side or from behind. In that situation you are not trying to kill the animal with one shot, but to anchor it and the wider the wound channel the more tissue destroyed. It is quite possible, and I have seen Barnes, etc. miss the spine or cause insufficient damage and the mammal covering a good distance with little blood after a hip/rear end shot. Have seen the same from Amax's and like bullets due to follow up shots and a few first shots, and NONE have moved at all after the hit. There is simply to much damage caused by the bullet.
I don't use them for every application, nor do I believe that they are the best choice for most people's uses, however I have killed hundreds of 100 pound and up animals, including elk, with Amax's and for what and where I use them there is simply no bullet that kills faster.
