All I"m going to say is I have frontal chest shot deer with partitions, and never had full penetration and an exit.
I have shot frontal chests a couple of times with a small 6mm round and barnes and never have not had an exit.
We can harvest 5 deer a year here. Means I MIGHT shoot 7 rounds with checking zero. And that box of 50 is going to last me more than 10 years becuase i'll take some deer with an arrow.
The day that I can't afford barnes for what we shoot, is the day I need to give it up.
Only really because I believe in the motto be prepared.... And as such I've seen standard bullets do some really wild/weird things in our small deer even... such that I want a margin of error, not just a wing and a prayer.
Especially the day a buck stopped the 180 partition out of my 300 in his neck at around 100 or 125ish yards. His spine stopped it. I say that meaning it was all there, all up against the spine and it broke the spine but never penetrated. When a cup and core fails to penetrate a simple neck bone of a deer... and I've seen it even from a small pig and a sierra game king.... fairly heavy for caliber at 160 out of 7 mag.... pig only 50ish pounds shot in top of neck walking away. Bullet did not exit. But did break spine at least while coming apart...
