You have to ask yourself a question first.
Where do you shoot your animal?????
Do you aim for the chest cavity??? Best.
Do you aim for the neck??? Risky
Do you aim for the should joint??? Risky and destructive of meat.
Back in the day, many hunters tried to break the near shoulder. It was ok but it wasted a lot of meat and often ended up with a lost, wounded animal. Especially with inexperienced hunters. Often, the bullets available weren't up to the task. So, the manufacturers started making bonded and later solid copper bullets. They usually do a very good job of breaking big and small bones and penetrating well. Some people complain they penetrate to well, especially when taking chest cavity shots.
You need to analyze your targeting of an animal.
I've used the whole gamut of available factory bullets and even got into swaging my own (briefly)
When the SST Interlock bullets became available, I was skeptical to say the least. There had been several attempts by other companies to make similar bullets but IMHO, none were satisfactory.
I had been using Hornady Interlock bullets for years, almost exclusively for hunting everything bigger than coyotes. They did everything they were advertised to do. The only complaint I had with them was that they weren't as accurate as I would have liked. Don't get me wrong, they were plenty accurate enough for big game hunting. Problem was in my head. I had been bitten by the accuracy bug when I got into Hunter Bench Rest shooting and became more than a little anal about acceptable accuracy.
My first use of the SST ILs was on coyotes. I used a 6.5x55 with 139 grain bullets. At 25m, they worked perfectly. They weren't explosive at all.
OK, time to try it out on deer. The first deer I shot, was a spike buck White Tail at around 40m. The bullet penetrated a rib on entry, went through both lungs and exited through a rib on the far side. The only wound visible was the exit wound. It was about 2cm across. The animal stumbled for about 10m and dropped.
The next deer was a mule deer doe, limited entry animal. The shot was from a blind and was close to 200m, in a hay field. It was windy but not windy enough to drift the bullet a foot. I made a bad shot and hit her in the near shoulder. It was dead on, no angle. The bullet, broke the shoulder and penetrated through to the next shoulder. All that was left of the bullet, was the cup, with a little bit of lead still in the base. The rest, was spread around the area, like shrapnel. Some fragments had cut the carotid arteries and the animal didn't go far. It dropped instantly and started to push itself with its hind legs for 20 or so meters before stopping.
Since then, I've used those same weight and style bullets on moose, bears, deer, elk and coyotes without an animal lost. The only bullet I ever recovered was in the mule deer doe. All the rest penetrated all the way through and kept on going.
My experience with 7mm SST ILs was a bit different. The 139 grain bullets were very frangible. They did the job but made a mess. I switched to 162 grain SST ILs and the problem was solved.
One caveat here, I don't have magnumitis.
If you like magnums, that's fine with me. I am recoil shy and choose not to use them.
IMHO, the SST ILs were not made for magnum velocities. Many use them in their magnums and love them though. IMHO, I believe much of the difference in opinions on the performance of the SST ILs comes from their use in magnum cartridges at much higher velocities than they were intended to perform at. That would make them fine for ranges over 200 yards but close up and personal is a different story.
