In recent decades lot of hunters have been conditioned in to equate high weight retention with "killing power." I suspect this trend started with Bob Hagel's book in the 1970's, where he emphasized weight retention so much. As a result some hunters started demanding "premium" bullets even for shooting whitetails, and manufacturers started making expanding bullets that retained more and more weight.
Another result is that nowadays there's often a knee-jerk reaction from some hunters about bullets that fragment. Have even heard hunters say a Nosler Partition "failed" because the front end flew apart, just like John Nosler designed it to.
While it's true bullets that don't penetrate the vitals don't kill worth a schidt, it's not true that 100% weight retention kills quicker. In reality fragmentation increases killing power by making a bigger hole in the vitals. That sounds simplistic, but just because something is simple doesn't mean it's wrong.
Berger bullets penetrate into the vitals before they fragment, which also would seem to be a simple concept to grasp. But a lot of hunters apparently can't get their mind around it, because they've been brainwashed by high weight retention for several decades now. As a result there's always at least one guy on every Berger bullet thread who whines and moans when he's never even seen one in action.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
