Miles,
I have several recovered X's, from the ungrooved originals to TTSX's, that have lost petals--including one, shot into the shoulder joint of an axis buck, that lost all 4.
Might post a photo later, but for now I will repeat something that Randy Brooks told me a while back, while we were on a deer hunt together almost 20 years ago, after the TSXs appeared, but the TTSX's had not. He was astonished after introducing the original X when so many hunters thought it was so desirable for X's to retain all their petals. He always though losing petals might help them kill a little quicker, but being a good businessman, he gave customers what they wanted, tweaking the design until X's did tend to retain all (or at least most) of their petals.
Nowadays, the LRX's are designed to open up easily at lower velocities, so do lose more petals.
About 2/3 of the deer I kill are beyond 100 yards. About 1/3 are very close. The average is probably 125-150 yards. I try hard to avoid heavy bone, but the close deer get hit almost always such that the bullet goes through the atlas. Consequently it doesn't surprise me in the least I have not recovered a bullet from a deer shot with a mono. It has been of interest to me that I have only found evidence of a single mono losing a petal. I expected to in the beginning and I have looked hard. Statistically, with that many deer it should have shown up if it was likely to. Probably it is not likely to because I have only high shouldered a few, none in the hips, none through hard bone in the legs. I would not be a bit surprised nor consider it unlikely that out of a couple dozen that got it through the brain stem that some of those bullets lost petals, but at the typical 25-30 feet at which they were killed, recovery of bullet or petals is pretty unlikely.
