Hunting bullets have gotten so good--and there are so many good ones out there--that superb performance has become routine and poor performance is downright rare. Provided, of course, that you understand what performance characteristics you need for the job at hand and that you match them with a bullet designed to deliver something similar.

This is Federal's new "Tipped Trophy Bonded Bullet," a 180-grain .30 caliber in .30-06. A nickel-plated case, wicked yellow polymer tip and perfect recovered bullets from wildebeest and giraffe show that this load is a serious contender.

There are still great bullets intended to provide rapid, almost explosive expansion. Such bullets are great for deer-size game but poor choices for really big game where penetration becomes more important. And there are some great bullets designed to provide maximum penetration. These are wonderful for the heaviest game but, in my view, poor choices for the deer/sheep/antelope class. Why? On smaller game more expansion (within limits) equals less tracking.

There is a growing class of bullets designed to both expand and penetrate. This is perhaps the most difficult thing for a bulletmaker to achieve because these are two diametrically opposed concepts. Expansion creates more resistance and thus limits penetration. Although you can't have it all, there are some very good "compromise" bullets that do a darned good job. The first of these was John Nosler's Partition. It stood almost alone for 50 of its 60 years as a bullet that offered both expansion and penetration: The front part expands fairly quickly; the back half, almost like a mini-solid, continues to penetrate even if much of the front part is wiped away by friction.

In recent years I believe all the "tipped and bonded" bullets have joined the Partition as great compromises. The polymer tip initiates expansion, while the bonded core holds the bullet together, allowing weight retention for deeper penetration. The first of these was Nosler's AccuBond, followed by Hornady's InterBond and Swift's Scirocco.

In my experience the Swift Scirocco (the most expensive of these) retains the most weight and penetrates the best of these three, but all are very good. Good enough that I wasn't certain we needed yet another, but that is essentially what we have in Federal's new "Tipped Trophy Bonded Bullet" (let's keep that in quotes because this may not be its final name).

I used some of these bullets on a hunt on the Eden Conservancy in northern Namibia in June 2007, the first time these projectiles were used on game. Honestly, I wasn't really excited at first. The bullet wars have been going on for some time, and I didn't expect any revelations or revolutions. Also, I was a friend of the late Jack Carter, inventor of the Trophy Bonded Bearclaw (TBBC) bullet. His was the first readily available bonded-core hunting bullet, and it was magnificent. Prior to his death, Jack licensed the design to Federal, and the company has been making it for some years. It's a good bullet, generally accurate and providing excellent weight retention.

But in my experience the TBBC as recently manufactured is not quite as good a bullet as Jack Carter's original. This is not surprising, since Jack's bullets were darn-near hand-made. Federal's version obviously cannot be. But you see, I expected this new "Tipped Trophy Bonded Bullet" to be just a tipped version of the Bearclaw.