I might also mention that when Nosler introduced Ballistic Tips they were designed for deer-sized game, as they already made a great bullet for game larger than deer.
They emphasized this the first few years, but so many hunters insisted on using Ballistic Tips on elk (because they were named Nosler, or because they were so accurate, or both) that they started getting complaints, especially about shoulder shots. In fact one of my fellow writers at the time was so impressed with the accuracy of 165 BTs in his .30-06 that he used them on elk.
He was not, however, very ballistically sophisticated, being more of a hunting writer. I warned him at the time that if kept using them on elk (he'd killed one raghorn bull with a rib shot) that he'd end up chasing a three-legged elk around someday. That happened the next fall, when he put one into the shoulder of a big cow, and it failed to penetrate. He eventually ran down the cow, but he could have saved a lot of trouble by using a 165 Partition. The finer accuracy of the Ballistic Tip didn't make any difference in killing elk, because he never shot beyond 400 yards anyway.
He did switch to Partitions after that, but there a LOT of hunters like him back then. Eventually Nosler grew weary of people using their deer bullets on elk, so developed the heavy-jacket Ballistic Tips. As I mentioned early in this thread, the first was the 200-grain .338, and after it proved to work fine they expanded the heavy-jacket Ballistic Tip to calibers and weights that also might be used on elk, primarily from 7mm up.
Swift ran into basically the same damn thing when they introduced the original Scirocco. They already made the A-Frame, a great bullet for game larger than deer, but many hunters (many if not most deer hunters) wanted something like the Ballistic Tip, with a plastic tip and boattail for a higher ballistic coefficient. (BC was getting to be a big deal about then, due to the appearance of laser rangefinders.)
Swift designed the original Scirocco to expand very widely, to make a bigger hole in deer and kill quicker. But many hunters saw Swift and "bonded" on the boxes, so expected Sciroccos to penetrate deeply, and used them on bigger game. The result? Eventually Swift had to redesign the Scirocco to expand less and penetrate deeper. Hence the Scirocco II.
