The purest form of a surface blow up I have ever seen was early in the life of the .243 my uncle let my dad shoot a deer with some fast hand loads. It was a nice buck and it was hit square on in the neck and should have passed through the neck bone. The deer dropped like a stone. When it got up and ran off after the neck cutting by another uncle it caused quite a commotion. My cousin and I had to go chase it down and when we got it it was of course quite dead. It had a fist size chunk of meat missing, and the bullet never made it to the spine. Never found any fragments or other path out of the deer, just that big divot of missing meat.

Probably the jacket and core just disintegrated right there. I shoot chipmunks with 35 grain VMaxs at about 3200 and they will only just barely scuff up a board under or behind the "volunteer", and usually the chipmunk is just about vaporized. I have shot quite a few out of the scrap lumber pile with a board underneath them and one within a foot or so behind. If you get the chipmunk, the boards will have minor scuffs at most. I have seen the same results with .243s and 55 grain VMaxs. I have only done a few direct comparisons with the .243 compared to dozens with the .223 though.

My conclusion has been that those bullets just come completely undone. The Nosler BT lead free usually leaves some tiny little sparkles of jacket and you might find a few tiny like #12 shot size copper BBs.