I've been finding dead, unrecovered elk since I can remember. In some cases the elk were fresh enough to find bullet holes, and most had bullet holes in the front half. A one lunged elk can cover a lot of ground in a short time. In dry conditions and thick timber, it can be very difficult to find an elk that travels 500+ yards before it dies.
Yup - anyone who spends any time in the high country late October knows all about this. There are a LOT of unrecovered animals.
The Partition and TTSX are pretty good bullets - I would put them solidly in the 2nd tier but still recommended. I have never seen anyone use the E-Tip but it's probably similar to Barnes X bullets.
The advantage of heavy for caliber A-Frames, Bonded Bear Claws, and Northforks is that they almost always give a pass-through so you get good blood for tracking, but give a wider wound track and less chance of a failure to expand than Barnes.
The partition sheds a lot of weight until you get to the middle bores where they move the partition forward. For .30 it's just pretty good. For .338+ it's quite good perhaps first tier.
