This is a somewhat silly thread. My experience from 40 years of deer hunting is that the Remington 170 grain Core-Lokts in .30-30 are a superb deer round. They are proven and reliable killers. The concept that they are somehow not good enough for deer is simply laughable. I once killed a 240 pounder with one at 180 yards. A one shot kill. It was devastating.
The Nosler Partitions and Barnes are also great rounds, but are simply and absolutely unnecessary for deer. If you like them, great. But don't tell me that they are "better" on deer. Dead is dead.
If for some strange reason I was going to use a .30-30 on moose or elk, then yes I would definitely use the NPs or Barnes. But I'm not, and 999 people out of a 1,000 aren't, so why do we have these foolish debates.
And by the way, I once shot a medium size buck, broadside, high lung shot, at 40 yards, with a .243, loaded with a 105 grain Nosler Partition, and it went clean through with virtually no expansion. I had to trail that deer for almost half a mile with almost no blood trail, and it was alive and still running when I finally killed it, with my .30-30 that I use for tracking, loaded with a Core-Lokt.
Regards,
Mannyrock