Been thinking about this thread & Sierra's GameKing performance & just to throw some stuff out here for further what-have-yous.
My bud & me have been using the Federal Premium .30-06 180 Game King (spec'd at 2700 fps) for elk exclusively (I switched to a .308 coupla years back w/Barnes XBT - 'nother topic, but no reason other than a different rifle entailed a bullet switch) for years.
We've taken 10-12 elk, granted mostly cows (but still, a 400 lb animal) with this bullet. All but 2-3 were easily within 40 yards & many at 20-25.
A couple were direct broadside mid-high shoulder shots, breaking both & exiting completely. All others were broadside heart/lung shots.
We have recovered one bullet & that on a sholder shot - perfectly mushroomed, w/~90% weight retention, against the farside hide. A classic "not through" shot.
Every bullet path showed great tissue destruction (especially off-side lungs) w/o anything excessive indicated.
Shoulder-shot elk drop - period. Most lung-shot elk go down within 40 yards, leaving a decent enough blood trail. We did have one LS elk that ran 1/4 mile but that's elk for ya. (That one had
the most blatant blood trail I have ever seen, dead on its feet but hadn't quite got the picture yet.)
Sierra recommends hunting velocities at 2500-3100 fps & ranges of 150-600 for elk/moose for this bullet. We're in the velocity ballpark, but well under the "optimum" closeness (for lack of a tech-whiz-o word
).
Velocity/range specs posted in their manual seem to jive with what Art got, but from our experience ... I dunno.
Certainly no argument & as I said, posted for gee-whiz info.
Maybe if we'd shot heavier bone, etc. at these close(r) ranges, we'd be gettin' some bullet blow-up? Probably more expansion, that's almost a given.
Think we'll keep shootin' where & how we do. Seems to work & I loaded up about 200 of these a while back - no sense paying Federal close to $20/20 when I can do 100 for ~$40.
Anyway, FWIW.