I guess what I'm looking for is a cone shaped wound cavity where the front of the bullet expands quickly to damage the near side lung tissue and then blow through the back side with a couple inch diameter exit hole for maximum blood loss to the ground if they run. I don't shoot for shoulders because it makes such a mess of the front shoulder meat. In my opinion those Partitions give me more of of a football shaped wound channel and while there was always a dead deer at the end of the trail, the blood trail is what I am looking for and haven't seen with a couple dozen deer hit with Partitions. Two elk with 160's with the 7 mag showed me that same small diameter exit wound. I saw the best blood trail with a.308 165 grain Hornady Interlock with a heart shot. I had steady blood on snow starting only five feet from the poi. I always want an exit wound, so stopping a 140 grain SST inside the last deer makes me wonder about that one, so the jury is still out on the SST's. It sure reads like those Ballistic Tips have been toughened up some since they were introduced. I was talking to a guy at a restaurant who had a deer on his car that was shot in the neck. It looked like it had swallowed a grenade and I asked him what he hit it with? An early Ballistic Tip and it made kind of a bad impression on me.
Good luck!
The wound channel that you've described seeing is EXACTLY what's supposed to happen.
If you don't want to chase deer. Shoot the damn thing in the shoulder. If you choose not to, you're going to have to track a few.
I've shot plenty of deer in northern WI and MN. The MN version are much heavier than the deer in even Ashland, Douglas and Price Co's where we hunt hunt most of the time. A 200# dressed weight deer up there is rare. In MN, big woods country of the NE part of the state. Most 3 year old bucks are well into 200# because they're shot before the rut runs them down.
