The title pretty much says it all. My thoughts run to the fact that any cartridge with a muzzle velocity of 2800 FPS or less really does not need a premium bullet. Frankly, I've only used them twice on game. One time was almsot a disaster and the second was spectacular.
The disaster came from a 30-06 loaded with the 180 gr. Nosler Partition. The animal was the biggest bodied Mule Deer I have ever killed. This animal weighed 296 pounds in the dressed quarters on a certified butcher's scale.
The first bullet clipped the top of the heart cutting a deep groove in the muscle but not making a hole to let blood out. Shot number two was right through the lungs. Shot nubers three and four were misses although one did cut off an antler. I forced myself to settle down and broke his neck with the last shot. The shot through the lungs looked like I'd poked the hole in them with a pencil; just a small hole with no other damage. Years later when I go a chronograph, I found the load was doing 2710 FPS. Shots at this deer ranger from maybe 40 feet to 35 yards. When I shot he ran to the right. When I shot again he ran back to the left. Every time I shot he would reverse direction just like those targets in a shooting gallery. The whole thing was like some kind of dream that at least ended well.
My normal deer load in the 30-06 is the Sierra 180 gr. Pro-Hunter but I only had that one day to hunt and hadn't made up any of my regular loads. Working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week because we were short handed does put a crimp in one's plans to reload and hunt.
The successful shot with a Premium bullet came from my .35 Whelen on my cow elk hunt last year. The shot was about 150 yards out with the elk running away slighly quartering to the left.
The load was the 225 gr. Barnes TSX over a stiff charge of Re-15 with a velocity of 2700 FPS. The bullet hit the elk just behind the short ribs and exited between the neck and the right shoulder. At impact, that elk hit the ground so hard that she bounced. I shot my first deer way back in 1949 and I've hunted something in the deer/elk class every years except during the time I was in the military and even then got a couple of hunts in. In all those years, I cannot remember ever seeing an animal go down so fast or so hard.
I have to wonder? Was that 180 gr. Partition just way too tough for use in the 30-06 or was it a case of bullet failure. In fact, it was a premium bullet that cost me a deer a few years back. It was a hunt in the KaIbab National Forest and the state of Arizona asked that hunters there use one of the monometal bullets. It wa sgetting close to the rut and the bucks and does were starting to stick together. I finally found a decent buck that would look great on the wall and because my Whelen was stoked with those Barnes bullets I did not dare shoot. Oh I'd have gotten that buck all right but that bullet would have passed clean through him and taken out a couple of does as well. Game Wardens frown of such antics. To be honest though, even a cup and core would have passed through and taken some does so maybe I'm being unfair.
Anyway, the question still stands. Are premium bullets really all that necessary if muzzle velocity is 2800 FPS or less? What say you.
Paul B.