Tejano,
Yeah, some of the problems were due to two different .30 caliber versions. That never seemed like a good idea to me....
But one of the failures-to-open I know about occurred with 160's in a 7mm Remington Magnum, using factory ammo. The shooter was a former government trapper/hunter and long-time outfitter I've known very well for many years. He shot a big Midwestern whitetail more or less broadside, and it turned and started trotting off. He shot it again twice more before it disappeared. Luckily there was snow on the ground, and he tracked the buck several hundred yards before finding it dead. All three bullets went through the chest cavity, and as far he could tell none opened up much, if at all.
In my experience it's pretty easy to see when bullets don't open up, even if they're not recovered. The wound channel is very narrow, with only slight bruising along the outside, not anything like the destruction from any bullet that expands. It's unusual to also find the bullet, because obviously when they don't expand they tend to penetrate even more than usual, but have seen recovered bullets a few times, and either they don't expand at all, or barely start to expand.
Have seen some hollow-point TSX's that only opened up to about bullet diameter, as well as a few that didn't open up at all. Have mentioned this before, but the only TSX's I've seen or heard of failing to open were all from 6mm to .30 in caliber, which is why I've hypothesized that recoil-flattening of the tips in the magazine is the major problem. .22-caliber centerfires don't kick enough to flatten the tips, and TSX's over .30 have much larger holes in the tip, which would be just about impossible to batter closed from recoil.
