Accurate shot placement is vastly more important than energy transfer so that always comes first. As a practical matter, it means a dome is the only choice for longer ranges. But for modest distances, if you can find a wadcutter that groups well, they are absolutely devastating to pest birds and squirrels and such. Hollow points seldom produce any meaningful expansion and end up being less effective...for a given shot placement, that is. Meaning if a hollow point proves sufficiently accurate to cover a greater distance than a wadcutter, by all means use it when you need to reach out a little further.
So for example the 9.3gr RWS Supermag wadcutters group well in several of my rifles out to at least 35 yards, and since a good portion of my pest control activities are done at 25-35 yards, I use them a lot. Kind of expect them to do well from a decent Lothar Walther barrel (around 12fpe):
But the more surprising thing is they group well from the OEM Chinese barrel on a QB79 HPA conversion, and at speed that is generally regarded as absurd for a wadcutter:
Either way, these things are wrecking balls when they hit a pest.
But then at a couple of locations where my shots exceed 50 yards, I'm using domed pellets 100% of the time. For that middle ground between 35-50 yards, I'll sometimes use a hollow point. But the reality is I just don't find many hollow points that really deliver both pinpoint accuracy and a useful degree of expansion, so for the most part I end up flip-flopping between wadcutters and domes.
