That's interesting. The two rifles I have loaded for with the badlands needed 60-70 thou jump to group well. This is my first year hunting with them, I'm looking forward to seeing first hand
I haven't killed anything except paper targets with my 0.257" hammer bullets, but I have sure made a thick stack of dead paper targets. I did use a 0.308" hammer on elk last year and it honestly did not appear to behave significantly differently than the badlands on pronghorn a month prior, but that is two different animals, two different cartridges, and two different bullets so I'm not sure it's a great comparison.I killed a handful of animals with the 110gr SBD II from a 1:7 25-06. MV was around 3200. They killed similar to a Barnes for me. One actually tumbled in a pig after hitting some bone and was quite devastating. Otherwise in thin-skinned game they killed, but slowly. I will say the BC was good for a mono and they were accurate and BC was accurate to around 1000 yards. Personally I like the terminal performance from hammers a little better and I just limit my effective range. If legal, nothing beats lead..
I am going to focus on getting as many animals down with the SBD2 110gr as I can this year to test performance.
I do believe the whitetail my nephew shot with the badlands 95gr BD2 was tumbling, possibly before it reached the animal. The shot he took was 30 yards through some brush (I told him to wait for a clear shot, but his finger got anxious). With the angle of the shot as it was taken (buck was slightly quartered towards us), the bullet should have exited right in front of or in the stomach. However, the exit was actually further forward than the entrance. That being said, the tumbling bullet was incredibly lethal. While the deer didn't drop in its tracks, it lost a lot of blood rapidly and maybe went 80 yards.
That experience made me question if I should instead be using hammer bullets with all the kiddos. I'm hoping to get my own kids out this year, but my 12# 25-06AI might be a little too hefty for them. I'm looking to build a lightweight, suppressed 18" 25 CM that would serve as a good low recoil rifle for the whitetail woods.