Hornady SST vs ELD-X

[Caseknife]

Recovered a bullet from a deer. ELDX 6.5PRC 143Gr and while it was a bang flop, I am less than impressed with the end result. 275 yards, behind the shoulder and exit the opposite shoulder and the hide stopped it. 36Gr is all that was left. That means a whole lot of lead is missing in that deer.View attachment 163875

Exactly why the three boxes of factory Hornady ammo I have will be shot at the range for the brass only. I load the 127LRX in my 6.5 PRC. I have an aversion to bloodshot meat and lead and brass fragments throughout. As for accuracy, anything in the 1 MOA is very huntable, 2 MOA would be good for the majority of hunters, probably better than 80% of hunters can shoot in field conditions.

 

[jacknifejc]

In my experience the ELD-X bullets don’t hold together. Some people like their bullets exploding, but I like mine to mushroom out and retain their weight. To each his own I guess. They are very accurate though, and seating depth isn’t a big issue with them.

 

[Sasquatchewan]

My only beef with ELD-Xs is that out of all the animals I've shot with my 25-06, it left very poor blood trails. I mean, they all died pretty quick, but I'd shot an antelope and a whitetail in snow and had a few tiny drops of blood. I ended up switching to 100gr TTSX since they just grouped better.

 

[Brian in Montana]

Hear a lot of mixed reports on both, particularly ELD-X, some blow up like a hand grenade, some just pencil-hole through the vitals, some mushroom and perform great. For me, I never sent one at an animal, I tried them in 7mm-08 and .280 Rem and just couldn't get them to group.