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Over the decades, I’ve killed a few hundred whitetail deer. Sizes varied from 100ish pounds in central Texas to 300 pounds in the Louisiana lowlands near the Mississippi River. When Nosler quit making the Solid Base Boattails, I switched to Nosler Ballistic Tips (130 gr) in my 270. The first generation worked fine, but Nosler toughened them up and the second generation works quite well. I really can’t tell the difference in downrange performance between the first and second generation bullets. As for fragmenting and leaving metal in the meat, in all these years I have never seen that. Probably due to the fact that I shoot them in the lungs and try to avoid the backstrap and the hindquarters.
So...for deer I’d stick with the Nosler BTs and for Elk I’d go with the Partition, probably the 150’s. That said, I’m quite sure Sierra, Hornady, Speer, etc, would all do just fine.
With the Nosler BTs, I pretty much always get passthrough with deer, whether using the 120s in my 260 or the 130’s in my 270. But when it comes to medium to large hogs, the 120’s rarely exit. The 130’s in the 270 exit more often, but not always. Of course the hogs don’t go very far, so I usually collect them anyway.
I live and hunt in Texas these days, so mostly I hunt with my 260. If I went back to my old Louisiana hunting grounds I’d probably use the 270. It’s important to drop them before they get into the near impenetrable briar patches, and the 270 seems a bit more effective in that regard.
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