ONLY in my humble opinion.....
The Superformance ammo is too fast for the 53 grain V-Max bullet for coyotes.
As Leon said, a splash occurs when a thin jacketed bullet hits a hard area of a coyote at high speeds....
The Superformance ammo says right on the box "Varmint". Coyotes are "coyotes". Not "varmints". They are tough and hard to kill. The super fast velocities on that 53 gr. V-Max will result in lots of encounters like this one that started the thread. The load is great for varmints like it says on the box, but when hunting coyotes, especially at ranges under 100 yards, where lots of coyote shots are taken, splashes will result, as will some pretty good fur damage when the bullet does splash.
These are great rounds for very explosive prarie dog hits and such.
But, to be truly effective as a coyote round, you need to do one of two things with the load...
1) You need a thicker jacket for the velocity it is using.
(A thicker jacket will hold the bullet together better so that the required pentration can cleanly kill the animal.)
OR
2)
You need to significantly SLOW DOWN the speed of the bullet so that it won't be so explosive and splash on close range shots, or shots that hit the shoulder or other hard area of a coyote.
To be truly effective, a V-Max bullet in a .223 needs to be 53-60 grains and have a muzzle velocity of around 3000 fps.
When you have the right combination of the proper velocity & V-Max bullet, it can indeed be a great killer of coyotes.
All I ever use is V-Max bullets of 55 grains moving at a MV of 3000 fps. It kills better than anything else I've tried....and, I've tried LOTS of loads and bullets.
Barry