Late to join this conversation, but just wanted to offer experience of loving both the Nos. Part. and Barnes X: I have used the former on many animals and was my go to for "big." I started moose hunting in an area with some decent size grizzly and one big one we saw regularly. The first year, I recovered partitions from my first moose (two rounds broadside) and they'd lost more than half their weight, I started looking elsewhere. I started using the early 180 X bullets in 1993. In the moose that I shot after that, only one Barnes was ever recovered. It was quartering away and uphill. The shot hit the left rear "knee" joint, passed upward breaking the last rib, crossing the lungs, hitting the ball joint at the shoulder and turning slightly forward lodging under the skin. It traveled through two massive bone and nearly 7ft of animal and retained over 90% of it's weight. Nothing wrong with the Noslers, but bullet technology has come a long way. Partition design is more than a half century old. While I still have partitions on my shelf, for tough or mean or big, I'd always go with X.
