It makes no sense to argue about bullet performance and the rest. I am probably the less experienced hunter in this forum, but I understand that if one likes to hunt with bullets that expand fast but still penetrate enough to kill a moose by damaging the lungs/heart, then an Accubond or Partition works just fine. And I am not surprised at all by having controlled-expansion bullets such as these two passing right through while killing the animal. A lot of hunters in Alaska and other places where there are large animals that can be grumpy and have big claws have some options relating to what they want from their bullets. For example, lets say that I want the most penetration and perhaps not as much expansion from the NOS bullets argued about in this thread. In this case I choose the same bullet, but heavy-per-caliber. And yes, the trajectory will decrease, but I am getting the greatest punch possible from the bullet I have chosen. If it passes through or not, who cares as long as it kills the animal as fast as possible?
I can also achieve the same by choosing a bullet of the same weight as before, one that is not heavy-per-caliber, but one that is designed not to expand as fast. In this case, I can choose the Barnes TTSX, a slightly tougher than the NOS, "Swift A-Frame, and so on. In bear country a lot of hunters prefer to go with tougher (less expanding) bullets, and as I mentioned above, one can achieve that by going up in bullet weight, or switching to another bullet. But the bottomline is that pass through or not makes no difference other than when tracking the animal, but bleeding is not the only thing that kills the animal. For example, a gut-shot moose may bleed inside for quite a long time before it dies, but a lung-shot animal may not always bleed a lot and still won't be able to breath and drown after the shot. A heart-shot moose will die pretty fast not only because it will bleed, but it won't be able to breath. Don't ignore the shock wave the bullet causes to the internal organs. This shock is not a wound channel, but an extremely fast "shacking" (don't have a better word) of the internal organs as it travels through the animal. A brain shot does not cause much bleeding, but kills fast. A neck shot (breaking the neck) or even spinal shot also stop the animal and kills relatively fast without much bleeding.
Pass throughs or not make no difference in relation to killing the animal or not. What matters is what organ and how much damage the bullet has caused to it as it passes through or not. We put too much emphasis on bullet performance and tend to ignore that we, the ones shooting the gun, have to do our part and shoot the right spot. I remember reading a story about a couple of hunters using a .338WM and .375H&H who shot a grizzly bear numerous times, and the bear ran into the brush after being hit by the bullets. The two hunters tracked the bears about 30 minutes later, and the bear charged. During the charge the two hunters finally shot the bear dead. The moral to the story they told was that from that moment on they were not going to use any .338's and .375s to hunt bears again, just .416s and up
As for me, I am a one-gun hunter who prefers bullets that don't expand as fast as the Partition and Accubond, but they all work fine as long as I do my part.
