Hey Lt. Smoke,
I've carried the .45ACP for more years than I'd like to remember, and initially had to carry ball. Didn't have a choice back then....it was ball or nothing. Later in life, though, I choose any bullet that allowed me to hand craft the load....yes, the factories do make mistakes and yes, they use whatever powder will get the pressure velocities where they want them. Not so with hand crafted loads. I always test my ammo on medium game....either deer or hogs in the area that I live now. I observe the performance of the bullet, as in how fast the game drops and how quickly it expires. Also, I can look at the bullet path, the entrance and exit wounds, etc, etc, etc. If I can retrieve the bullet, I look for any signs of bullet failure.....and no, seperation of the jacket isn't always bad.....some of the most lethal bullets that I've tried had jacket seperation quite often. It simply becomes a secondary missile inside the animal. For testing, the tougher the animal, the better. Anyway, if it works out well in the field, I'll carefully hand load small lots for carry, and off I go. By the way, and I'll probably catch grief for this, but over the years my field weapon has almost always been a 1911 (usually a five inch Government) in .45ACP. You'd have to see how it performs in the field to make a judgement, but believe me, it'll do the job and then some if you can shoot. Right now, I'm carrying the 200 grain Hornady XTP and sometimes the Hornady 230 grain XTP....they both do an incredible job in the field, and I know that they'll knock the snot out of any BG that's dumb enough to threaten me or those that I love. Anyway, best of luck to you.