The kid’s rifle LOVES the 140 ELD-M. My Creedmoor prefers both the 143 ELD-X and 147 ELD-M.
Any experience with the 143 ELD-X on game?
ELD-X is fine. I prefer the 147gr ELD-M’s of the two, but either will kill.
Have killed, and seen killed quite a few with 6.5 Creedmoors to way beyond 400 yards. Normal Accubonds, monos, Partitions, as well as Bergers, ELD-M and X, Scenars, SMK’s, etc.
What PF wrote above is terminal ballistic reality. “Ft-lbs energy” is not a wounding mechanism and has no bearing on how well a bullet/cartridge kills.
Tissue destruction is what you’re after. The more tissue destroyed, the faster things die. The slowest killers in all animals, including elk are deep penetrating, minimal expanding bullets such as monos. They are the bullets that give cartridges such as the Creedmoor it’s “marginal” label. Old thinking dies hard, and when most were raised on magnums it only seems to makes sense that penetration is what you give up by going smaller. It’s not. Until you get to extremes (22cals for elk for instance) penetration is not really the problem. The real problem with smaller rounds/bullets is reduced wound size and tissue destruction. Small, narrow wound channels are exactly opposite of what you want terminally- especially so with smaller cartridges. What people think is the right answer is the exact thing causing them to think of cartridges as minimal.
The smaller a round, the more important it is to pick a bullet that has sufficient penetration, yet creates as wide a wound as possible.
My choices would be Berger VLD’s 130+ grains, Hornady 147gr ELD-M or 143gr ELD-X, or Heavy Lapua Scenars. If it just had to be “hunting” bullets then- Federal Edge TLR would be tops, with Partition, Accubonds, etc after.