To answer your question Smoke my opinion is based on two very long tracking jobs.
What were the results of your tracking jobs and what did they tell you about the importance of meplat size with a sample of one for each bullet? Did you recover the animals?
I went to a great deal of effort to justify my opinion with something other than anecdotal evidence to avoid a dik measuring contest with you, but you persist with your "if it did not happen to me it did not happen" discussion.
Sorry Bob but that's not what I said at all. What I said was, I've shot a bunch of elk with pointed bullets and they all died so I'm not buying that you need a large meplat to kill an elk. You responded with a bunch of stuff you read in a book, and I put about as much trust in what gunwriters write as I do with what I read on here. You can quote Ross Seyfried all you want, makes no difference to me. How many elk has he killed with muzzleloaders, and did he test different bullets with different meplats to get his results?
If you looked at the No-excuse bullet in the link it is obvious the nose profile is a Keith style semi wadcutter design. As much as I admire Elmer Keith there have been some advances in bullet design since he invented his bullet about the time the .357 magnum became available. The no excuse bullet acts as a solid and is in no way related to your pointed expanding bullets.
I don't believe I ever said that the No Excuses bullet is related to the bullets I use because they're obviously not the same. What I do know about the No Excuses bullet is that a bunch of guys have used them to kill elk and have said that they like the way they kill elk. Maybe they're successful because a .50 caliber 400 grain hunk of lead flying through the air will kill an elk when the shot is placed correctly, regardless of the shape of the meplat. Design basis matters little in the face of success. Unless you just like to read about those kinds of things.
Come to think of it, in all of the discussions I've ever heard or read between elk hunters on bullets, the subject of the size of the meplat and its importance in killing elk has never come up before now. Do you want to know why that is? Because it doesn't matter.
If it did matter then elk bullets would all have large meplats but they don't. Large meplats may have some theoretical advantages, but so do pointed bullets. Theoretically at least, a pointed bullet is "better" in that it has a higher BC, retains more velocity and kinetic energy downrange, and as a result creates a larger would channel.
Or maybe they just kill elk because a 400 grain .50 caliber hunk of lead flying through the air will kill an elk when placed properly.
