I believe you may be overthinking the whole thing.
I started hunting with a 270 when I was 12. I am now 63 and I have over 1/2 a century of 270 use behind me now. I have killed quite a few elk with 270s over the years and seen about 3X more killed with 270s then I have killed myself. If you use a bullet that holds together you have no problems at all.
I have killed elk with 150 grain Remington round nose bullets loaded to about 2900 FPS, with 150 grain Noslers at 2950 fps, 160 grain Noslers at about 2800 and one with an old 170 grain Speer Round nose loaded to about 2650 fps.
I have shot only one elk in my life with a 270 twice, and ALL others were one shot kills, with the largest majority of them falling at the shots or falling within about 2-3 seconds. The one that I shot twice I found I really didn't need to, but I didn't know it at the time, so I put 2 two 160 grain Nosler Partitions through it.
So having some goal in mind of how fast a bullet "needs" to go is OK, but in the real world there would not be any real difference as far as the killing of elk goes, if you found the load gave you 100 FPS less then you had in mind. Some magical number is just a goal in your mind, and it will not amount to a thing in the field.
I would also be disappointed if I had a figure in mine and I fell shot of that figure by 400 FPS, but even up to 200 FPS less would not bother me if the accuracy was good and I knew the bullet was going to hold together.
If it doesn't "shoot as flat" you can just hold that much higher. If you can't hold still enough to hold a bit higher at any given range you are firing from you have no business firing from that range at all.
There is an AWFUL lot of debate and theory about all this, but for me the facts of over 1/2 century of 100% success are hard to argue against.
Anytime a theory and a fact disagrees, it's easy to figure out which one is wrong.
As I said, I believe you may be overthinking this.
Last edited by szihn; 09/03/19.
