When talking about velocities in the 800 to 1000 (maybe) fps range, talk about expansion and "knockdown" are nice hot stove topics, but........... Trading penetration for (maybe) expansion with no enhanced performance, especially having answered the demand to go to a lighter bullet to get it, is likely to be counterproductive in this velocity range. Recently a friend engaged a very large porcupine with somebody's 200 grain hollow points at the top of very large apple tree, range perhaps 15 yds. Three witnessed center of mass hits had the porky sick but still upright on the limb and holding on. I asked for the gun and disrupted the porky's central nervous system forward, whereupon he hit the ground like a sack of.....sand. My friend was amazed. He's a good shot and he shot COM deliberately to see the dramatic effect of his hollowpoints. I shot for the CNS because I'm old and don't want to see even a fat porky suffer, even though I wonder why considering what they do to dogs. It was a watershed example for him. For me, I'm old and it suggested a paraphrase with apologies to the great late Bill Jordan: "I'll take my hardball, or better yet Hornady full jacket flat point 230's... You can take your chances." The .45 ACP didn't build its almost 100 year reputation with anybody's bucketmouth hollowpoints or underweight bullets of any other kind.
