Hornady ELD-X

bummer7580

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Oct 9, 2017
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128
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minnesota
After watching the long range hunt shows I decided to try the sleek Hornady 162gr. ELDX in my 7mm RM. I have been fortunate to be able to hunt elk each year with some pretty good tags in my pocket. My usual bullets to use on bulls have been the 160 gr. Nosler Accubond and Parition. I don't have a lot of complaints about Nosler bullets.
The trouble started this year when the elk appeared at only 183 yards. I put him down with first shot but when I walked up to him he would flop around trying to get up. Finishing shot was at about 15 feet. Unfortunatley his leg bone was covering his ribs and the bullet didn't penetrate deep enough. I felt a sadness as I watched the animal thrash and suffer for a couple minutes. Normally I try not to judge a bullet on one trial but for me the Noslers are more reassuring. One guy asked me if the ELDX bullet failed since I killed the elk, I suppose not but it wasn't pretty. To the guys using the ELDX with good luck please continue. These are just my observations.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2017
Messages
53
Location
Virginia
I shot a whitetail this year with a 143 ELDX and was under impressed with the results. Top of heart/bottom of lung through the back of both shoulder blades at about 150 yards. Complete pass through with minimal damage and small entrance and exit holes. Deer only went about 75 yards, but there was almost no blood trail at all. Not moving really fast either. about 2600 out of a 20" tube. This was the first and possibly last animal i will shoot with an eldx. Have read about a bunch of people having good luck with them but i dont see it.
 
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bummer7580

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Oct 9, 2017
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minnesota
My experience on bullet action was just the opposite. We found pieces of lead 18" from entrance in all directions. Nothing exited.
 

gbflyer

WKR
Joined
Feb 20, 2017
Messages
1,577
Shot a cow his year at 370 with .308 ELDX 212gr leaving the muzzle at 2850. Heart/lung shot. Dropped like a hammer. Complete pass through with 1-1/2” exit, no bullet recover. Perfect.
 

slingerHB

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Oct 26, 2018
Messages
173
I'm using the 308 178gr eldx in my longer range setup which I use for mule deer and elk. I shot two whitetail doe this year with it just to get more practice with the gun and to stretch my range. After the second doe I said I'm done killing whitetail with this bullet as it totally ruined a lot of extra meat. I shot the second one behind the front shoulder only to turn the opposite shoulder into burger and even ruined some neck roast and some backstrap. Just a touch to hot for whitetail

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mt100gr.

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Jan 29, 2014
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NW MT
I watched an absolutely giant bodied mule deer fold to a 143eldx at 250 yards from a short barreled creedmoor. Muzzle velocity of just shy of 2600.

I was on the spotter and at the shot he hunched up hard, took a bound, fell to his front "knees" (if you will) and got wobbly. The second shot was as well placed, though unneeded. It was already on the way as the buck was folding up. 2 golf ball sized exits and a very quick kill.

On the other hand, I shot a doe through the lungs at about 15 yards with the same bullet. She ran way farther than I expected. Maybe 75 yards or so. Great wound channel, massive trauma and blood loss.

I think there's a sweet spot when it comes to velocity for any bullet. And my experiences with the eldx have been similar to those I have had with corelokts, bergers, noslers, swifts, etc. Sometimes they flatten them, sometimes they seem a little harder to kill.
 

mcseal2

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Joined
May 8, 2014
Messages
2,671
143gr ELD-X out of my 264 win mag blew up on the shoulder of a big buck at 150 yards. It did break the shoulder and kill the buck in it's tracks, but the internal damage was massive and I recovered nothing but a few jacket fragments. The bullet did not exit. Impact velocity was around 3000fps, muzzle velocity was 3240fps, so I was asking a lot of the bullet.

The same rifle/bullet worked much better on a doe at 321yds later last year. I shot her in the chest as light faded at a downward angle. The bullet exited the bottom of her chest at the back of the lungs and broke a hind leg on it's way past. Impact velocity there was around 2750fps if I remember right.

I will use a standard Accubond or E tip on game bigger than deer.
 

hwy1strat

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Joined
Aug 9, 2016
Messages
394
Location
Spokane, WA
I shot an antelope at 525yards with the 143 ELDX out of my 6.5 creedmoor. Shot another one at 120yards. Both were complete pass through and it looked like a golf ball got shot through them. Lots of blood. I was very pleased with the bullets performance
 
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bummer7580

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Oct 9, 2017
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minnesota
mtmuley asks a good question, how should we gather information on bullet performance? Should we accept a testimonial from a TV show with film evidence off successful kills, do we look at a magazine picture and think that should be about perfect? Hmm not sure.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2017
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Location
Virginia
Maybe they are worth trying on another animal? Seems like pretty good results from others here. Anyone used a larger 30s 200-220 gr on an elk? Have some 220s for the rum but have not got to put them through an animal yet.
 
Joined
Jan 17, 2017
Messages
567
Location
sw mt
After watching the long range hunt shows I decided to try the sleek Hornady 162gr. ELDX in my 7mm RM. I have been fortunate to be able to hunt elk each year with some pretty good tags in my pocket. My usual bullets to use on bulls have been the 160 gr. Nosler Accubond and Parition. I don't have a lot of complaints about Nosler bullets.
The trouble started this year when the elk appeared at only 183 yards. I put him down with first shot but when I walked up to him he would flop around trying to get up. Finishing shot was at about 15 feet. Unfortunatley his leg bone was covering his ribs and the bullet didn't penetrate deep enough. I felt a sadness as I watched the animal thrash and suffer for a couple minutes. Normally I try not to judge a bullet on one trial but for me the Noslers are more reassuring. One guy asked me if the ELDX bullet failed since I killed the elk, I suppose not but it wasn't pretty. To the guys using the ELDX with good luck please continue. These are just my observations.

I have had the same thing happen at 100 yds with a 210 partition out of a 338wm, broken leg bone but little penetration into cavity. Sometimes stuff just happens.

I have killed two animals with the 178 eldx in a 30 06, both showed that the bullet is a little soft....as designed.
one was a black bear at 30 ish yds quarted hard towards me. entered just infront of shoulder with small jagged exit hole before last rib...looked like maybe a chunk of something exited, not a complete bullet. Severe internal damage, and bear didn't move after shot.

Second was a cow elk at 125 yards shot square in shoulder, almost always aim to miss meat, but didn't have a choice with this shot, very thick lodgepole. She limped off from the shot, and we heard her go down. After walking up to where we last saw her, we find her just standing there with no blood externally, shoot her again behind shoulder and she goes down for good. First shot went through scapula and exited ribs on other side but not hide. Found the jacket with a pretty good chunk of lead still in it. The second (10-15yds) shot, behind the shoulder not hitting any ribs, didn't exit the other side..

Neither animal left a drop of blood on the ground even where they died.

Not in love with this bullet, but this rifle shoots them really good.
 

cmahoney

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Jun 18, 2018
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Minden Nevada
I picked up a Tikka 6.5 Creedmoor this year to jump on both of those band wagons. Instead of loading rounds for it I picked up some Hornady precision hunter ammo with 143 ELDX bullets. They shot well under a minute at about 2650 FPS. I shot a Muley at 200 yards that was slightly quartering away. The bullet entered behind the right shoulder and landed under the hide after breaking the left shoulder. The bullet was still intact and looked like it retained nearly all of its weight. The buck dropped on impact.

I am pretty happy with both the accuracy and performance on my buck with that ammo, especially for the price.




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Tberg

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Apr 26, 2016
Messages
151
Location
Arizona
Killed 3 antelope this year with the 143gr ELDX from a 6.5X55. 80 yards, 200 yards, and 450 yards. Doe at 80 spun on impact and went straight down. Buck at 200 looked like if fell through a trap door. Bedded Doe at 450 rolled over dead. All had dime sized entry and golf ball size exit, same as the two coues I've shot 300 and 530 yards. Muzzle Velocity was 2860 on the antelope and 1st coues and 2900 (suppressed) on this years coues. Will use it on a cow elk hunt next week.
 
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Moneyball

WKR
Joined
Mar 17, 2018
Messages
319
I had one of those nightmare experiences with a 200 grain ELDX. I'll give a run down of what happened. My brother was shooting hand loaded 200 ELDXs out of a .300 win mag. These loads were grouping great and he was shooting a ton of them preseason to get ready for a non resident bull tag in Montana. He and I hiked for 5 days to eventually find a herd in the snow on our last evening. We were leaving the next morning so we knew this would be our last go at it. We crept along a ridge to find a good shooting position and spotted the bull. The shot was 416 yards, the animals were calm, the wind was perfect and minimal, they had no idea we were there. We were on a steep face, and we would have to lose sight of the animals for a ways/walk through the wide open hillside to get to another shooting position with light soon to be fading. My brother shot regularly throughout the year for practice, which is not the same as a hunting situation, but I can say that he was very, very comfortable at that distance. Especially when the shooting position that we found gave him the ability to shoot while laying prone with a bipod and rear bag. The shot goes off, I watched impact through my binos and the bull dropped in its tracks. I mean DROPPED. We watched the bull lay for a little while, as I have never been afraid of "putting another one in em" if there is any doubt. After a pretty short time, we did not celebrate, we decided that we may need to ease down the face to get as close as possible if another shot was necessary, and we needed to get there pretty quick as we were going to run out of legal light within 5 minutes give or take a minute or so. We dropped down into a small dip in the hillside and when we popped our heads up on the other side the bull was RUNNING facing us towards our 8 o'clock. We ran down the side of the hill to our left and cut the bull off around a small patch of jack pines. He was running quartering to coming from right to left. He continued along that path, he slowed and made a brief stop, with another shot being made broadside at about 100 yards. Again, I saw the impact and the bull was noticeably injured as he hunched up, pretty obviously hit hard. I also confirmed that my brother had dialed his scope back down to zero before the second shot. I could not believe that the bull toted it. We shot whitetails with this same load combination before leaving for Montana and we never had a deer run more than 20 yards or so. I understand that this is a completely different animal, just stating to inform that we had experience with this load and live animals. We ended up backing out, and we were back on the trail the next morning before light as a last minute effort to find the bull before we had to leave. My brother was driving me nuts that night as I could not fall asleep for more than 5 minutes without the silent darkness being broken by "He's dead right? We are going to find him in the morning. He has to be dead. He's dead. We got him. I hope we find him. Do you think we will find him? Surely we will find him. Hey man, are you awake? Do you think we will find him?" you get the idea...The next morning we immediately found blood. We could follow his blood trail on a damn near run. Prints in the middle of the track with blood on the ground of both sides of the body, and plenty of it. I was in the mindset that this was not going to take very long and this bull would be found. We eventually found an area where he bedded down with a blood puddle the size of a hula hoop, with no elk. The blood eventually slowed to a drip and lead to an adjacent land owners fence line. We found bloody hair on the fence where the bull crossed over onto the other piece of property. A local friend of a friend of ours made a phone call, luckily the land owner answered, and allowed us to cross over and search for the bull, to no avail. LLOOONNNGG trip home. I have always been a Hornady fan, not bashing the bullet either, just sharing my experience. May have been a freak situation that would have happened with any bullet. I don't know. We can only try to learn from situations like this one. If I had to do it all over again, I think we should have stayed put a bit longer and put another round in him if needed from our original shooting position. The short amount of time it took for us to get in and out of the dip in the hill was all it took for him to get the jump on us.
 
Joined
Feb 13, 2014
Messages
362
Location
Colorado
Didnt shoot an elk this year with my rifle but i did shoot a buck... 209 yards, 143gr ELDx out of my 264 Win Mag, traveling about 3150fps out the barrel. Broke shoulder, destroyed heart and lungs and passed right through...buck went no where...big bodied Muley too...

I switched to the ELDX this year cause they shoot better out of my 264 and ive seen several good results. Granted you can have bad results with anything...i shot a whitetail once at 100 yards with a 300WSM with a 180gr Accubond right through the vitals and that buck went over a mile before he collapsed.. then when i caught up i still had to put another one in him...nothing is perfect, but i have found accuracy helps.(usually)
 

chukar_chaser

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Jul 17, 2016
Messages
122
Daughter shot a small 4 point at 220 yards with 162 ELdx out of a 7mm and that deer was dead before he hit the ground.
 
Joined
Jun 4, 2014
Messages
1,163
Location
North Dakota
The ELD-X is one bullet that I will never shoot again. Developed a load for my 300 win last year with 178 grain eld-x, and took one whitetail and an elk. The whitetail was at a steep uphill angle at 250 yards. The bullet bounced around inside before becoming lodged in the spine. The weight of the recovered bullet was around 27 grains and I found pieces throughout the cavity and even a few pieces under the hide in the hind quarter. The elk was a frontal shot at 100 yards and again recovered many pieces of the bullet throughout the animal.

Made the switch to 180 barnes ttsx and couldn't be happier.
 

KurtR

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Joined
Sep 11, 2015
Messages
3,534
Location
South Dakota
143 eldx at 2910 out of my creedmoor about 15 deer mostly whitetails closest 100 farthest 687 never more than one shot and dead. the 140 amax 30 or so deer same results. Had the tsx fail and pencil through in two different calibers had a few accubombs blow up. Funny how every bullet will fail if you look hard enough. Dont know that i have ever heard of a partion not failing though
 
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