For a shot that is too high and too far back, with low retained velocity on a comparatively soft animal a Barnes would be close to my last choice. Just about anything would have worked better and most of them are fairly ordinary.
Turn the situation around to a large animal shot through major bone and muscle mass at close range with the associated high velocity and the same Barnes bullet is very good, equal to any and probably better than most.
Everything is a compromise, but soft rapidly expanding bullets at high velocity have gotten me out of more situations than they ever caused, and the harder expanding bullets have caused more blood trails than they saved by being able to shoot through animals lengthwise. That doesn't necessarily mean that they failed to work as designed, it that I am often less than thrilled by what they do when they do work as designed.
