I used to love interlocks and used a lot of them and loaded many more for friends. I had a friend complain that they were blowing up on deer like varmint bullets. He said the old ones I'd loaded were great but the new ones were blowing up.
I still had some of the bullets from the old lots and the new lot so we sanded half off of some from each lot an a belt sander. The older lots had much heavier jackets with a thicker interlock ring much higher up in the bullet. I called Hornady and they said their techs often made adjustments like that from lot to lot.
I started buying more nosler 2nds partitions after that. A few years back sps had partitions for $12-$15/50 so it wasn't much more than interlocks anyways. I've never had a friend complain after I loaded partitions for him.
I still like and shoot a lot of Hornady bullets but their interlocks changing all the time made me a little nervous. I've also gone mostly to high bc heavier long range type bullets for a lot of my hunting. Now when a friend asks for a good hunting load and says he's not shooting longer ranges I just load him some partitions.
For years I always used to use the interlocks for that and have probably killed a dozen deer myself with them. If you're using them for elk I'd consider the 180g. The ones we started having problems with were 150s loaded to 3000 fps from a 30-06. The old lot work great and the newer ones had soft ball sized entrance wounds and little penetration. I shot a cow elk last year with an 18" 7-08 and a 150g .284 eldx. It had a large entrance like that and very little penetration. A quick follow up to the neck stopped a potential 1 lung rodeo. I've since switched that to the 180 eld at an even lower mv hoping for more penetration.
Bb
