Mark,
Well, you got me curious, so I went to my hunting notes and added up all the bullets from .270's and .30-06's that I'd recovered over the years. I am guessing that the number of animals shot with each is pretty similar, but didn't go back and check.
Not all the animals were shot by me. Some were taken by Eileen, and a few by other people I was hunting with or guiding.
Turns out the number of bullets recovered from each caliber was so similar that there was no "statistically significant" difference.
The animals that stopped .270 bullets ranged from pronghorns to elk and Shiras moose, and in the .30-06 from relatively small whitetails to kudu and blue wildbeest. So the size range was pretty similar.
The .270 bullets included Sierra GameKings, Hornady Interlocks, Nosler Partitions and Speer Grand Slams. The .30-06 bullets included Berger VLD's, Winchester Silvertips, Remington Core-Lokts, Nosler Partitions, Winchester Fail Safes, Speer Deep-Shoks and Norma Oryxes. So bullets ran the gamut in both cartridges as well.
This is obviously only one person's experience, but it covers a wide variety of game with a wide variety of bullets. And there just wasn't any real difference.
