None of these bullets are necessarily a bad choice. It’s all about what you want to prioritize.
The TMK tends to give you a football shaped wound channel while the Berger, Scenar and other tumble and fragment type bullets provide a wound channel that is more trumpet shaped in most cases. In my own personal experience with the latter, I’ve seen some that pencil or tumble through the onside lung and heart area on deer, only to fragment in the offside lung. I felt like the result was a longer post-shot run and more tracking. That said, using Bergers and Scenars isn’t a bad choice, just different.
On the issue of meat loss with the TMKs, my answer to that is just don’t shoot shoulders. I personally like to eat them and find it wasteful. I do agree that TMKs, ELDMs and ELDXs will damage more meat. It’s just a balance of how much tracking you want to do. If you are hunting in small parcels and having a deer run across a property boundary means it’s in your neighbor’s freezer, the TMK is your hedgehog. If you’re out on the wide open prairie and public land where you can watch your dog run away from you for three days, a Berger or a Barnes may work fine and result a little more meat in the freezer.
Finally, if longer distances and or shorter barrels are your bag, the TMK will likely perform better at lower velocities than a Berger or Scenar. Both of those seem to need about 2000 fps at impact to perform well. Most monos like Barnes need about 2100-2200 fps, ELDMs and ELDXs need about 1800 fps, TMKs seem like they can do pretty well down to 1600-1700 fps.
