In the past I've done all my hunting with traditional C&C bullets but I'd like to give some monos a try this year. I hunt up in NY, which means primarily Whitetail deer and I prefer to take lung shots.
Monos do not kill as quickly, in general, on lung shots, because they don't destroy as much tissue because they don't expand as violently.
For pure lung shots, you'd be hard-pressed to ever beat a C+C. Your best bet with a mono for quick lung shot kills will be the Cutting Edge bullets that blow their petals. If you're using a 30 caliber, the 135 grain Raptor comes highly recommended when driven at high speeds. We have not tried the 125 Maximus but that looks good also.
The other great results we have had (and are using currently due to accuracy and lower price) are the Barnes TTSX black tip 120 grain. This bullet is "softer" as it is designed for the 300 Blackout, but when driven at 308 velocities it still holds together but expands wider than the rest of their line. We like it for more mono destruction even on lung shots. We will probably stick with this bullet until something very different in technology comes along. The 110 black tip works the same but with a lower ballistic coefficient.
Having shot a maybe 3 dozen with Barnes/GMX/E-Tips in the lungs and found the vast majority of them reduced the lungs to red soup, I will stand up and say the above is BS pure plain and simple. You don't wreck lungs worse than that and what happens after is a result of the individual deer and MAYBE some difference in shock effect but that would be an exceedingly difficult thing to prove.
Certainly, your mileage might vary. But I've shot plenty of deer in the lungs with TTSX, and no they don't always (in fact rarely in my experience) truly reduce lungs to red soup. Sure, they cause bleeding, but they in no way tear up lungs quickly like a more-violent expanding bullet. In fact, I have had more than one lung shot deer not expire quickly when shot with TSX/TTSX due to the minimal amount of shrapnel being thrown around (both the 30 caliber 150 TSX and the 243 80 TTSX have left me with long tracking jobs on minimal blood trails).
For bone shooters, the monos make a caliber seem bigger than it is; for lung shooters, the monos make the caliber seem smaller.
I agree with MILES58. I have been a 264 shooter since I purchased my first 260 rem back in 2000. Over the course of those 19 seasons I have harvested without exaggeration over 200 whitetails. It got to the point where I played with different bullets in an attempt to discover the better combo. 120 NBT, 125 NPT, 140 NAB, 140 SST, 130 NAB, 140 AMAX and 120TSX. In all that the 2 standouts for dropping things IME is the 120TSX and the 140 AMAX. The 140 AMAX does a lot of damage. The 120 TSX dropped 11 in row at one point and still does so with regularity. With the 125 NPT things ran the furthest followed by the 140 NAB when things were hit with it on occasion they acted like they weren't hit at all. The 120's just proved to be better IME. The 120 NBT was good but they ran not far but they still ran.
After probably 60 or 70 harvested in the last 5 years of 120 TSX max load of H4350 I would say 40 dropped all but 1 of the rest ran maybe 20 yards or less. 1 I inadvertently hit in the neck and it had a hole in the neck the size of a quarter dropped but was still alive when I got to it. I remember looking at my buds and asking them if they had ever seen a deer try to go anywhere with a hole like that in its neck. You could literally look through it. Every time I've shot one its pretty much the same all kinds of jello lungs completely deflated hearts destroyed all kinds of trauma. I've never shot any of the old C&C bullets and I am sure they would work successfully but why mess with what works but again they're probably going to run. I have been trying to get the 100 TTSX to shoot as accurate if I can find a load that works I will continue the experiment.
But until that pans I will continue to shoot em behind the shoulder and watch what happens
The deer here in VA are probably a little smaller than NY but not much.
Good luck and shoot straight y'all
