A few comments on this thread so far:
Have seen Tipped Trophy Bondeds used on mule deer and elk, and they act very much like North Forks--which is understandable, since NF's are also solid-shank withe a small lead core in the tip. The performance of both has been deep penetration, though both Trophy Bondeds (whether tipped or not) and North Forks tends to end up under the hide more than monolithics, I suspect because the rounded mushroom, due to the bonded lead, doesn't cut through hide like petals. The tip doesn't provide any magic, other than a little higher BC.
Have seen a BUNCH of Barnes TSX's used on big game in both North America and Africa, and have seen a few things some of their most enthusiastic fans haven't--which tends to happen if you see a large enough sample. Have seen one TTSX enter behind a mule deer's shoulder at 100 yards, a 100-grain started at around 3150 fps, create as much bloodshot meat as any cup-and-core I've ever witnessed, and seen X's of various sorts also shred plenty of meat on shoulder-bone shots. But in general they do ruin less meat than bullets that lose more weight, though on average they also don't cause as much interior trauma, for the same reason.
Between 2000 and 2010 I went on a bunch of cull hunts in various parts of the world, in part to learn more about how bullets work on big game. There were always other people involved, usually shooting different cartridges, which increases the number of observed examples considerably. During that period, along with other information I recorded as closely as possible how far animals traveled before falling after a solid chest hit, whether or not heavier bone was involved. The bullets that resulted in the longest average death runs were monolithics, while the shortest runs resulted from bullets that fragmented more, in particular Bergers. In all those hunts some monolithics did fail to expand, in particular TSX's in calibers from 6mm to .30, I suspect because there's just enough recoil for the relatively small hole of the hollow-point to close at least partially due to battering on the front of the typical bolt-action magazine. Never saw it with .22-caliber TSX's, perhaps because there's not enough recoil to batter the tip much, and never saw it with TSX's larger than .30 caliber, probably because the hole is a lot larger.
It may also have to do with a particular production run of bullets; one batch of 100-grain .25 TSX's resulted in two non-expansions, one with a .257 Weatherby Magnum. Haven't yet seen a TTSX not expand. Have also seen Barnes X-Bullets of all kinds lose anything from one to ALL petals, but despite the theories of some hunters that losing any petals is a partial failure, I haven't see it affect killing power at all--probably because they tend to lose petals when hitting bone, whether shoulder or spine. When hitting heavy bone the front end also tends to bulge, resulting in a larger, flat frontal area, which seems to work just as well as 4 intact petals. Or at least the animals all died much like they do when all petals remain intact.
Interestingly, I also never saw a Berger fail to penetrate the chest cavity of any animal up to around 450-500 pounds (the largest I've seen taken with them) if the bullet hit anywhere from the diaphragm forward. They certainly don't penetrate deeply, but they penetrate sufficiently if the bullet's put in the right place. They also penetrate well through fairly heavy bone. One hunt involved culling feral goats, and not only did the Bergers penetrate shoulders on 200-pound billies, I could NOT get them to fail even when deliberately shooting the shoulder joint of big, dead goats at a few feet. They still went through the bone and into the chest, and the "delayed expansion" was basically the same as when hitting ribs.That said, I would not try to shoot through the shoulder joint of a big elk with a typical Berger, though probably some of the bigger ones would work, especially at longer ranges. The average distance animals went after a chest hit was under 20 yards--for those that moved at all. Saw a higher percentage of instant drops with rib shots when using Bergers than any other bullet, including Ballistic Tips, SST's, etc. Death-runs with monos averaged around 50 yards, and they also resulted in the smallest percentage of instant drops from pure rib shots, not involving any shoulder bone. All other bullets performed somewhere in between those two extremes.
As a more general comment, I haven't run into a big game bullet yet that won't perform well if used within the parameters of its structure, the reason I don't get all wound up about THE BEST big game bullet. Part of my job is to evaluate how shooting equipment works, the reason I still use a bunch of different big game bullets for my own hunting, exactly which depending on the cartridge, muzzle velocity and the game hunted. In the past decade my own big game has been taken with Barnes TTSX's; Berger Hunting VLD's, Cutting Edge Raptors; Hornady GMX's, Interbonds and Interlocks;Norma Oryxes; Nosler AccuBonds, Ballistic Tips, E-Tips and Partitions;North Forks; Sierras; Swift Sciroccos; and Tipped Trophy Bondeds. Oh, and whatver's in Federal blue box factories, along with Remington Core-Lokt and Winchester Point Soft Point/Power Point factory loads. The 22 cartridges used ranged from the .22-250 to .416 Rigby, and though there were a very few bullet hiccups, penetration was always sufficient for the specific animal, and all bullets except solids expanded as designed.
