Hopefully here in about a month I can give you some first hand knowledge of how 230 eldx work on big bears.
That's my nightmare. Client showing up with those. LOL. They will work. But what I've seen in 30 cal around 208 IIRC weight wise was no exits on moose shot behind the shoulder. Did not like that all that much. Moose didn't quite make 100 yards though.
bottom line, if it works then its all good. "dangerous" game is a bit different in my. books but in reality its all the same I suppose.
How much “energy dump” can one get from a broadhead?
. Depends on if it exits or stays in or just barely passes through and weight of the head and shaft......
Wanna get into a theory on that topic? Theory would be you shoot a large angle so to speak and cut as many organs as you can, vs just broadside through the lungs. AND have the head stop in the lung/heart area so when the animal runs it just wobbles around cutting stuff the more the animal runs the more cuts the more bleeding. And I"ve had that happen twice. It worked great. Neither one planned.
But to rely on perfect worlds...
I stick to bullets that expand. Retain 100% of weight basically IF you ever find one. And exit. Not really worried about how much energy I "wasted"
And if I need a DRT shot then I shoot CNS. Simple as that. Sometimes it's not easy to get to the CNS so in those cases I rely on penetration to get there or to the vitals.
I'm almost 60. I still have seen no personal or client failures on barnes bullets. Other than horrible first accuracy when they came out in SOME guns. I've never seen no expansion. I can't recall ever loosing an animal. I have seen a few that had minimal blood trails but were dead when we got there. And had been for some time. For edible game I get very little bloodshot meat. And we still shoot some Bergers these days on deer just because they are a great long range bullet etc..... but there is much more blood shot around the holes. FWIW.
in all my years I've seen some really wild examples of cup and core. Way erratic. Like FMJ to early ballistic tip from one shot to another on game kings for example. I've shot the wrong partition weights and had more destruction than I wanted and no exit wound on deer. I've seen partitions never exit the ribs on moose from 338/250s.
When it really matters it's going to be a Barnes for me. Whatever works for you is cool too. But one reason to beat a dead horse is no failures and over the years that's something I cannot say about Barnes. It's kind of like mechanical broad heads. I think we quit shooting em before they got em right. But had enough failures there that we went back to COC heads and just decided that they killed as well and penetration was never an issue with them at that point.
Lots of fun things to talk about anyway. Keeps the world moving and selling products.