Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Honady discontinuing Amax?

Gentlemen,
As is per usual I get on the bandwagon late, however, I finally found several Hornady Amax's that work past perfect in several chamberings. Short question: Why does Hornady SEEM to be discontinuing one of their keystone products? Just got over Ballistic Tips and found Amaxs and now they are taking them off the market. What is the scoop?

Regards, Matt.

They're phasing them out with their new ELD line of tipped bullets...heat/erosion resistant tips. At this time I think they have 6.5, 7, 30, and 338 offerings. Not sure what their plans are for the remaining calibers with Amax offerings.

Hornady seems hell bent on driving customers away. Found the last two boxes of 100 gr 25 cal IL-FB's in my area last weekend.

Once those are gone, I won't buy another 25 cal Hornady bullet. It will be Noslers and Barnes from then on.

I really hope someone from Hornady reads this.

Depends on bullet weight.. supposedly the A Max tips suffer from heat deformation at high speed, and fast twists.... the ELD is designed not to... instead of changing the tip on the A Max, evidently their marketing folks are deciding a new name will sell better.. Lord knows the bullet market, consumers always seem to want something that is the "latest and greatest" vs what has been tried and true for decades...

but everyone wants a 700 to 1000 yd capable cartridge to take a deer at under a 100 yds...

in 22 cal, the 75 and 80 A Maxes are not on the chopping block, and neither is the 100 grain A Max in 6.5 mm... for now... at least as explained to me after just getting off the line with Hornady's Customer Service folks...

Pretty sure the Nosler PT continues to sell just fine

I would suggest that once consumers find a bullet that works really well, every time, they are very unlikely to leave that bullet.

Hornady is making a mistake by discontinuing the AM, IMO. Once my considerable stash of AM is gone, I highly doubt I'll pay the premium to start using the ELD. There are other premium LR bullets to choose from once you start getting into the price range of the ELD.

It will be interesting to see which A-Maxes disappear. I'd probably sell my remaining stocks of them, because using discontinued bullets in handloading articles doesn't make sense.

However, Speer claimed they were phasing Hot-Cors out in favor of DeepCurls a few years ago--and then reversed themselves.

1. Call Hornady

2. Get the straight poop

3. Profit

I wish I knew what happened to the letter I got from Ruger when I queried them about making rifles from stainless steel (like a few of their revolvers), and putting them in synthetic stocks. They said they "had no plans" but came out with them a few months later. (I think maybe I'll seek "royalties" for my successful idea! )

IOW, good luck getting "straight poop" from a manufacturer, but it's possible.

Sometimes....

....and who's making the query?

Interesting on the tip burning...

Having shot a LOT of amaxes at longer ranges, I can say I never had anything weird going on.

And if you shot one with a tip missing, its impact was WAY weird.

I'd think burning the tips off would result in some strange issues from time to time.

I think they are full of BS or that the tips burned off or melted uniformly.

Some of your Co- writers have no issue using bullets that have been discontinued in their article........
You are a fine exception in your craft.

As long as the 162 ELD is basically the same as the 162 Amax all is good. If not........ boys, get a rope.

I'm playing with some of the 208 ELD's in my '06; it likes them very much, which is a good sign. One thing the Amax is that it's always been an easy bullet to get to shoot.

By the way... Hornady made DRASTIC changes to the 162 Amax at some point. I have some of the old ones... different shape, ogive location, tip....

Matt- one other thing you might not know about this is that Horn is replacing the Amax with TWO bullets: the ELD and then a "hunting" version that is tested for controlled expansion. This is true of the venerable 162 at least. Remaining to be seen is if the hunting version shoots as well as the Amax and, hopefully, the ELD. I believe they've gone to an interlock ring on the hunting version. In theory that hurts accuracy but, who knows.

A hunting 162 Amax with the same BC and yet some resistance to blowing up doesn't suck one bit! So fingers crossed.

Hornady claimed that they had proven with radar that the bullets were not meeting expected downrange ballistic coefficients, and traced the cause to erosion damage to the tips.

Me, I would have rented one of those ultra-high speed cameras and fired bullets past it at long range, and visually confirmed the point was getting rounded off. If they did it, and confirmed that the Amax (and competitive bullets) had the problem, and the new bullet fixed the problem, then the photos could have been a terrific marketing campaign for them. But what do I know, I just design, make, and sell metal stuff?

It's not implausible that the tips round off. Aircraft that fly supersonic at low altitude certainly have significant skin heating problems. The problem might be worse with ultra-high speed cartridges.

maybe only in 223 with 75 amax you never see the problem.

I know the BC was as close as you generally get comparing to drop and drift actual shot locations.

Probably never got em hot enough?

But in the end, you'd think, hey, same amax, different material in the tip, same general price would be my thought....

Yup, the price increase and name change strikes me as an excuse to gouge.

And Hornady isn't saying the tips melt off, they're saying the tips warm up and begin deforming in flight, altering the close to mid-range BC values, until velocity drops off.

They could have simply changed the tip without changing anything else...they decided to scrap the whole line and change the name to ELD which rhymes with VLD, pretty obvious why.

I'll never buy an ELD. Fact. If I get to the point where I'm worried about bullet tips burning off, I'll use a Skinner or a Berger.

I'll buy shïtloads of them, if they shoot like the 162 Amax. And I'm buying another box of the 208 ELD's tomorrow, and they are considerably cheaper than Bergers, as well, at least at Cabelas.

If they don't? As I said... boys, get a rope.





I gotta think that Hornady just MAYBE knew what they had in the Amax and didn't make it WORSE........ hell, maybe it's actually a little better now.

Could be. Probably a big difference in aerodynamic heating, between 2700 fps and 3300fps, when using a bigger cartridge.