Mudhen, I was just curious what were the circumstances surrounding your two failures. (velocity, range, circumstances, what any of the recovered bullet parts looked like, etc) I'm shooting that same bullet in a 7mm SAUM @2700 fps and so far it has done well in wet newspaper and 1 antelope but neither are much of a test compared to an elk. Thanks for the info.
cody
The first bull was shot at about 70 yards with 7mm Reg Mag using a Hornady factory load with the 175 Interlock. At the shot, the four bulls and all of the cows took off. Finally found him three days later, dead pecked to smithereens by ravens and all the meat spoiled.
Second bull was two years later, around 90-100 yards with the same rifle and bullet, this time in a hand load at around 2,850 fps. Same story, bull took off, tracked him a ways on rocky ground and lost the trail. Found by another hunter two days later, about three miles from where he was shot. Guy said that it looked like I had used a varmint bullet.
The latter episode troubled me so much that I pulled all the bullets in that batch of hand loads and weighed them to make sure that they were all 175s. They were. (After 20+ y ears, I still have the rest of the box of factory loads, and I guess that I could check to see if, in fact, they are all 175s, too, but it doesn't seem worth the trouble,)
Obviously, a lot of elk have been killed with 175 Interlocks, but two good bulls lost to the carrion crew have spoiled them for me.