I can appreciate the opinion that lightly constructed match bullets like the A-Max, Berger VLD, or the SMK, or any other HPBT Match bullet are not appropriate for hunting, even though I don't necessarily buy into that line of thinking.
But I think it's very foolish when someone likens an Amax to an FMJ, and points out that the jacket is too thick, when it's quite obvious from the bullet's specs and description that it's actually a THINLY JACKETED BULLET!!! If there's any reason to claim that the Amax isn't appropriate for hunting, it's the fact that it's too frangible (not my opinion, just saying that I can appreciate that opinion), but you certainly are unfounded when you say that it's not suitable because its' jacket is too thick. Hornady's old manual, I'm sure, mentioned that it's an excellent hunting bullet for small game, because hunters had used it and told them that it was. But when you publish it, you have to back it up, so I can understand that they've withdrawn that recommendation.
Coming from Hornady - meaning straight from the mouth of some of the folks in Grand Island while I was standing in their factory - the reason they don't recommend the Amax for hunting is because they don't do expansion testing on that bullet, so they don't care to harbor liability for recommending it for hunting. I asked, because the books don't recommend it for hunting, but my wife has been HAMMERING coyotes with it in her 223 ever since I picked up 500rnds of their factory second bullets a few years ago. I stopped by to pick up more - which I did. So they don't recommend against it, they just don't recommend it.
Sure, sometimes it exits - it's a 75grn bullet running into coyotes that when young might run 25lbs, of course it might exit. But an exit wound doesn't mean at all that the bullet failed to expand like an FMJ. Jacket frags, separated core, bone chunks, or even just body mass can blow out an exit.
