In my opinion, the old SST was garbage. I had them come apart on small white-tailed does, shot from a moderate-velocity .308. Never again would I use that bullet.
The old SST was garbage, but as Nosler did with the early, fragile Ballistic Tips, Hornady fixed the SSTS not long after the initial poor results.
Among several instances I've witnessed in the past several years Including bull elk taken with a 180 SST from a Hornady factory load) was a hunt I went on in South Texas in 2017 with some other gun-industry people. We all used Franchi Momentum bolt-action rifles in .308 Winchester and factory ammo with the 150-grain SST at a listed 2820 fps. We took 20 whitetails and pigs--and never recovered a bullet, so don't know how much weight the bullets retained.
The biggest buck weighed around 200 pounds on the ranch scale, and was taken at around 100 yards, almost facing the hunter. The bullet entered the chest inside the left shoulder and exited the right ham. The biggest pig also weighed right around 200, and was shot through both shoulders at around 60 yards--and the bullet broke both shoulders and exited.
