We harvest a lot of game every year in South Africa at our hunting concession. Over the years we have seen about every cartridge and bullet you can imagine.
Our game ranges from the tiny duikers and steenbok, up to 2000 lb eland for non dangerous game. The average body size is 150-700 lbs for the warthogs impala, blesbok deer sized game to the bigger elk sized game of Gemsbok, Zebra, Kudu etc.
We settled years ago on the 30/06 for the loaner rifles. They are simply lethal, easy to shoot, and plenty of range. Plus easy to find ammo anyplace and folks coming over to hunt with our guns can find one at home to practice with before they get here.
In the last ten years one bullet has come to the forefront as the absolute most dependable and consistent performer of all. The Barnes TSX or TTSX. With this bullet you can shoot all the species mentioned and they will almost always give you an entry and exit. Two holes bleed better then one.
One interesting thing we found was that these TTSX and TSX bullets work even better as fast as they can be driven. So dropping down a bullet weight is a big advantage. They do not lose weight, so even shooting a 150 grain bullet gets you better performance and weight retention then a 180 grain Cup and core lead bullet.
Cup and core lead bullets crumble and fracture, solid copper bullets do not. We have recovered hundreds that are still 100% the weight as when brand new. Few are recovered by percentage because they exit most of the time.
So my suggestion would be a 165 grain TSX or TTSX both are going to work exactly the same. If you feel more confident in a plastic tip the TTSX is the choice. I've not seen a single difference in performance myself.
I'll say we have shot 1000 big game with them now in the last ten years, probably more when you consider the culling operations. Nothing has given us the consistent performance that these have.
