I find the discussion interesting...
my 1st exposure to the damage of a bullet on bigger than varmint animals, was my 1st year at FIL's deer camp... being a newbie, I did all the field dressing that year on 10 or 11 deer ( I think they wanted to make sure the new guy knew how to field dress a deer ) ... 1st thing... I only field dressed "dead" deer
all deer were killed with rifles including... .243 Winchester, 30-30, several 30-06's, 300 Win Mag, & 45-70... bear in mind, everything died... I was observing the wound channels, & the amount of "bloodshot" or bruising from the bullet... interestingly the 30-30 & the 45-70 had the least bruising... again those deer still died in an acceptabely quick time frame... the 300 Win Mag, had huge bruising...
a couple years later I got to witness a deer shot in the chest with a 12 ga slug... the slug hit a rib going in, & blew a vollyball sized hole, dragging at least a lung & portion of the heart on it's way out... no problem tracking that deer
... but it still ran a good portion of a mile up a hill before it dropped "dead"
as mentioned, deer & elk, are different than bear, but lets just also say, that hunting dangerous game requires different tactics... most guides will tell you to break a shoulder, not that a shot to the heart or lungs, won't kill the animal, only that it may be capable of killing you, before it knows it's dead...
I have a tendancy to favor big heavy bone crushing bullets... but I've also found that shooting wood chucks, with 357, & shooting COM, that big heavy bullets often did not stop a wood chuck with one shot, & I had better luck with them, with with 110's or 125's at higher velocity...
so what have I learned??? apperently not much