While I accept your per pound analogy, I am of the mind that one should do what you can to economize. As it is, buying premium bullets in the 50-lot for more than a standard C&C bullet costs in a 100-lot seems to be worth questioning. That is, unless there is a meaningful difference.
Obviously, there are people on this thread that are of the belief that a premium Barnes bullet is better. I admit, I have never launched such a projectile at a deer, so I speak from ignorance.
The average shot on a whitetail is about 80 yards. Our camp's average is somewhat above that. Our normal working range is within 150 yards. Our average range is just under 74 yards. We shoot a mix of .308 chamberings. I shoot .308 WIN and 30-06. My sons shoot 30-06 and 7.62X54R. My one buddy was shooting a 300 Win Mag for a while and went back to 30-06. We shoot a mix of Hornady IL SP's and Rem Corelokts in the 150-165 variety.
My question is for those who are experienced with the Barnes offerings: Exactly what improvements would we expect if we went to Barnes? How much deader would the deer be?
For me, there is the matter of quality-of-deadness. Since I am a semi-public individual who writes frequently of my exploits, I need a special something that the Barnes product just does not have. I covered this back in 2009:
In the Shamanic Reloading CaveAs to the environmental concerns mentioned by the OP:
I'd wonder if copper is all that more environmentally friendly than lead. More and more, I'm resorting to bullets from cast lead made from range scrap. This is recycling, and as such, I'm helping the planet in my own way. If you really want to delve into whether copper or lead is worse, you have to look clear back to the mining. I'm not sure a pit mine that extracts copper is any more friendly to the planet than one that digs up lead. I'm not sure. Help me out. Either way, if I was truly worried about it, I'd buy offsetting carbon credit to salve my conscience and so folks would still think I was hip. I might also think about limiting myself to only shooting deer that wandered past my bedroom window so that I could limit my carbon footprint by minimizing transportation and shooting over only licks that were made with solar sea salt.
I'm just saying.
