Steve,
I'm a bit puzzled by the "160-grain Nosler" you mention using in your 1903.
I've seen the 160-grain Hornady break both shoulders of a whitetail and exit--and also seen it fail to reach the far side of the chest on a broadside rib shot, both at a muzzle velocity of about 2200 fps from my 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer. Phil Shoemaker has seen the same sort of performance from that bullet. I have yet to see any such performance from a 140-grain Nosler Partition.
My favorite heavyweight 6.5mm bullet is the 156-grain Norma Oryx, a bonded bullet. It opens and penetrates reliably, but tends to open up wider than a Partition so doesn't penetrate any deeper. However, it's not a round-nose, instead a spitzer with a sflat meplat, something like the Speer Grand Slam. To get it to feed reliably in my M-S (a custom carbine built on a "1930 System" military action) I have to file a small radius on the edge of the flat tip.
