Hornady ELD-X

[jstraus34]

Yup, I'm sure and you should use what you feel comfortable with. Cup and core, interlock bullets work or they wouldn't exist. Just my preference to eliminate any potential risk that I can avoid... As Bsnedeker said, "do what makes you feel comfortable"

 

[bsnedeker]

Bullet placement trumps all things, as I've heard others say and experienced personally. I don't think anyone is saying they don't kill elk, deer etc, clearly they do but there is an x factor at play. It is my personal preference to avoid taking any unnecessary risk where I can help it and why I don't hunt elk or deer with a 22, might be a few other reasons too. If a make a marginal/bad shot on an animal and I experience core separation, will that result in a lost animal that I could have recovered had I used something else? I honestly don't know and can't prove it. Intuitively though, if core separates from jacket there is a greater chance that bullet will not pass all of the way through the cavity is that fair to say?

I'd say that's definitely fair to say. I would ask if having a bullet passthrough is important to the lethality of a bullet? In this case we are talking about a bullet that expands EXPLOSIVELY on close range shots. As this thread demonstrates when that happens it is absolutely devastating to the animal and it leads to quick recovery in just about every instance, regardless of blood trail (which is the only real advantage to a pass-through in my opinion).

 

[Themic86]

Shot a WT with a 143 eld-x in 6.5 prc and shredded both entrance and exit. Shot another and looked like a bomb went off on both sides. I moved away from them as it tore up way to much meat for my liking. It did drop the animal, but waste of meat was my breaking point.

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[jstraus34]

I'd say that's definitely fair to say. I would ask if having a bullet passthrough is important to the lethality of a bullet? In this case we are talking about a bullet that expands EXPLOSIVELY on close range shots. As this thread demonstrates when that happens it is absolutely devastating to the animal and it leads to quick recovery in just about every instance, regardless of blood trail (which is the only real advantage to a pass-through in my opinion).

You're right, the main advantage of pass-through is the blood trail which if the animal drops within 50 yards, who cares, as even the blind squirrel should be able to find it. Not sure if it matters or not but in a marginal shot, maybe it does. Hard to know

 

[Jakerex]

The net net is a dead elk but core separation falls in the bullet failure category. Certainly explains no exit & minimal blood trail.

Core separation is not bullet failure with a cup and core, non-bonded bullet….at least in my book.


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[Pocoloco]

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.

Some bulls are tough, wife shot her bull month ago with 139 hornady interlock 7mm-08 @ 293 yards standing still. On binos on tripod and I watched impact in chest and he just stood there, not even flinched. She said did I miss, I said no, hit him again. She did, same result. We did this 2 more times before he walked 10 feet and laid down. Tried to stand up and she hit him again. She held him cover for around 30 minutes till he no longer moved. We could see blood coming out of his mouth for most of the time, good lung shots. Tough animals

 

[jstraus34]

Core separation is not bullet failure with a cup and core, non-bonded bullet….at least in my book.


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If the lead and core were designed to separate, you're right. if not... I'm not a bullet designer so unless one is on the forum we are left to wonder.

 

[Jakerex]

If the lead and core were designed to separate, you're right. if not... I'm not a bullet designer so unless one is on the forum we are left to wonder.

Ok


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[aman]

I shot mule deer at 93 yards with 145 gr ELDX. It was a pass through and he dropped on the spot.

I think bullet placement is probably playing a bigger factor here than the bullet selection.