The thought of bullets coming apart inside the ribcage of an elk has little appeal to me. Yes, it can be very effective and will generally result in a dead animal � often with dramatic straight-down, DRT results. But what happens when you get a difficult quartering or THS opportunity at a fleeing elk that is or may be wounded? Will a bullet that comes apart quickly make it to the vitals?
There are a lot of bullets I would choose before I�d use a fast 140g SST for elk...
That's how I see it, too.
My experience was that the SST's shot the best out of my rifle, but they were the only bullets I tried where I could pick pieces out of the backstop at the range. That didn't make me feel too comfortable, so I chose Interbonds instead. The sample of 1 found one pass-through on the rib cage with maybe 50% expansion (judging from the exit hole), & 1 slug recovered from the offside of the skull, similarly expanded. Since I'm launching them at lowly .30-06 speeds, I've since gone to Interlocks.
It would be great if we all had the experience of having 100's of kills with every bullet in every weight offered. Barring that, though, we have to make our own decisions about what we personally feel comfortable with, & go on from there.
I wouldn't feel comfortable with the SST's at 7 Mag speeds. Maybe 7x57 light-load speeds, or 7x30 Waters for sure.
FC
