Smokepole,
Exactly.
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.
While I can't speak for others, I have no problem developing a load for elk and using it for mulies and even antelope. The bullets I've used over the years (Speer Grand Slam, North Fork SS and FP, Barnes MRS and TTSX and Nosler AccuBond) seem to work fine for all. Given I've shot more elk than deer I see no reason to develop a different deer load. My hunting buddies are pretty much in the same boat.
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.
What you call " a knee-jerk reaction" is often the result of well-considered arguments pro and con. Put me in the column that prefers a bullet that works just fine without blowing up in the animal and knows from experience that there are multiples to choose from.
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.
I guess I missed the posts where someone claimed "100% weight retention kills quicker". All of them.
If 100% weight retention was the solution, I'd be shooting spire point solids.
What I have seen is people, like myself, that don't trust Bergers to penetrate to the vitals from bad angles, be it from a poor angle initially or because an animal moved or whatever. I've had 40g varmint bullets blow fist-sized holes on the far side of coyotes, ribs and all, and have no doubt they would have taken a mulie or elk down pretty quickly with a behind the leg shot. Not so much if they had to penetrate a mulie from ham to sternum or penetrate a mulie from front to back with an exit, yet I've had North Fork SS do the former and Barnes MRX/TTSX do the latter, both resulting in the animal on the ground before I recovered from the recoil. A Berger VLD might have killed quicker but any difference would be so vanishingly small as to be immeasurable and in the ham-to-sternum case I doubt a Berger VLD would have made the distance.
Guess I just prefer bullets that provide reliable but controlled expansion with a higher probability of deep penetration than bullets that penetrate less with marginally quicker kills on good angles and what I consider a higher probability of wounding on bad angles.
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.
No whining and moaning here, just a stating of personal opinion based on my results with various bullets, the stated results of others that have used Bergers and were unhappy with the results and the stated performance claims of the manufacturer.
Most years I go big game hunting exactly twice - once on a weekend hunt for antelope and once for a week-long hunt for elk and deer. No one gives me free equipment or compensation of any kind so my hunts are entirely on my own time and dime. I spend a lot of time preparing for the hunts and choose bullets I believe give me the best chance of success under as wide a range of circumstances as possible. Bullets the manufacturer claims will lose up to 85% of their weight need not apply. Use Bergers if you want but attempting to denigrate those with different opinions of them not only makes you look small it leads me to believe you can't argue your position based on the facts.
