Use in handgun hunting would suffice for me. The distance traveled by the animal shot, and number of rounds needed to incapacitate. Then a detailed wound profile examination.
I think that's a stretch. I've read through this thread several times, and there are two themes for us nay sayers I think.
First, it's not that we are saying these bullets are ineffective or dismissing them out of hand, it's that we are saying there is not adequate testing to prove they do anything better than a traditional hollow point or hard cast, depending on what you are trying to achieve. They might. They might not. They appear to penetrate well, but will the flutes actually produce the star tears in living flesh?
Second, while gel provides a repeatable and measurable test media, we should not assume that a bullet will perform the same in a flesh and blood target. I acknowledge your meat tests, and I think they are a step in the right direction, but they still only represent a limited test of blood drained non living muscle. A living body is a more dynamic environment for a bullet as angle of impact and penetration can cause some odd bullet paths. Try looking up bullet wound xrays. Now monolithics seems to track straighter, but again, I still think we should try to keep any test media's predictive powers in mind and scrutinize the results. Meat tests help back it up, but what is needed is for the handgun hunting community to embrace them and use them for actual killing.
I'm going to tag
@CraigC and
@MaxP and see if they will chime in. I believe, if memory serves, that they did a bit of testing of these types of bullets in the field, and I believe they were not that impressed with the results. Though they tend to shoot big critters, and on a human sized attacker, the results may be different. So their results may not be that relevant based on the animals involved. In fact I think feedback given by Max is part of why Lehigh came out with flat wide nosed bullets.
Lets see if they can offer actual experience anecdotes.
