The biggest animal I took with the 230 .338 Fail Safe was a big Alaskan moose, quartering almost directly toward me at around 100 yards, with a .338 Winchester handload that got 2800+ fps at the muzzle.. The bull was standing on top of the 12-15 bank of a medium-sized river. Put the bullet just inside the left shoulder, and the bull stood up on its hind legs, then rolled down the bank --then got up and staggered into the river, whereupon my guide shouted, "Don't shoot it in the water!"
The bull flopped around for a few seconds and died in the deepest part of the pool, with only the top few inches of one antler above the water. I waded in and got a rope around the antler, and the guide used his jet-boat to tow the bull down to the shallows below the pool, where we spent the next five hours taking it apart, amongst clouds of mosquitoes. Found the bullet against the right side of the pelvis, missing one petal. The folks at Winchester said it was the first recovered 230 .338.
The bullet's performance was great, but moose often don't die quickly, even when the inside of their chest is wrecked--which was the case in that instance. I didn't find any fault in the bullet's performance, but anytime I read or hear that such-and-such bullet always "slams down" any kind of big game know whoever makes that statement either doesn't have much experience, or is FOS. In watching hundreds of big game animals die the ONLY times I've seen animals consistently "slammed down" is when the bullet breaks something in the central nervous system.
