Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 6.5 Creedmoor for Elk & Moose under 300yd - what bullet

The deer applications for this round are settled - but what about the bigger stuff. Is it reasonable to build a load that could solidly cover the bigger stuff under 300yd? What bullet would you load.

Don’t hold back.

Consider what's said of the Swede.
The Creed is a modern thing, that's just a bit behind a
round that was 24 ysars old, the year my Grandpa was born.

It's inferior with the bullets that made the Swede.
But they aren't necessary anymore.

125 or 140 Partition. or 129 or 140 Hornady SP, or Remington, Speer 140 SP. Barnes X of your choice.

130 Accubond out of a 260 works on cow elk.

127LRX has worked extremely well for me on large ungulates.

PintsofCraft,

A lot of bullets would work. One of the virtues of the 6.5 Creedmoor--and 6.5x55, 6.5x57 Mauser, .260 Remington, which are peas in the same ballistic pod--is that many cup-and-core bullets will work on game larger than deer due to their moderate velocity. But from personal experience I would tend toward the 120 Barnes TSX and 127 LRX, 125 and 140 Nosler Partitions, and 156 Norma Oryx, but other controlled-expansion bullets would work as well.

The one bullet I would NOT recommend is the Hornady 160-grain round-nose soft-point. Have seen it break both shoulders of deer and exit--and fail to reach the opposite ribs on broadside lung shots, when started at 2200 fps from the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer. (Phil Shoemaker had the same sort of experience.)

Elk are much tougher than Moose to kill. Any bullet good enough for Elk is all you need. Any bonded, partition or expanding solid bullet will work.

Not too many take long shots at Moose. Usually find them in the timber. 100 yards is more likely than 200 yards.

I have 156 gr. Oryx and and 160 gr. Weldcore that are intended for bull Elk and for the lower 48 Moose tag I'll likely never draw.

For cow elk the last few seasons I've used the 143 gr. ELD-X out of necessity as that was all I could get my hands on in the current unpleasantness.

I’ve taken several Roosevelt cow elk with 129 Innerlock, 140 Fusion and just recently 140 Sierra BTSP out of my .260 Rem and 6.5CM. Never more than one shot. Longest just over 250 yards (129IL).

Just about any reasonable bullet will work if placed well....

130 grain AB or 140 grain Partition, leaning toward the Partition.

A .22 rim fire could work....

Why take a hyped up pip squeak of a cartridge Elk or Moose hunting....

Take a bigger gun.

127 LRX would be my choice.

I dunno, the Swedes are killing moose regularly with a 6.5x55. Maybe them Oly mooses don't know they're being kilt with inferior firepower? eh?

The 160gr Weldcore would work well, but with the Woodleigh factory fire may be unobtainable. The X bullets seem like a horrible idea in such a small diameter gun - their typical failure is no expansion at all in lower velocity guns, and a .264 pencil hole isn't going to leave much to work with. The 156gr Norma would be a good choice.

140 grain Nosler Partition or Swift A-Frame would be my choice.

Never had a ttsx not expand. Not in any gun. Not in 6.5 Creedmoor. Anyone says any different is nuts. Now I'm talking average ranges. I do switch bullets past 300 or 400 on deer due to BC.

But a barnes not opening? Awful rare since not many have seen it. Its all I rely on when it counts. And for my moose hunting clients every barnes has done better than anything else including partitions.

I've seen them fail to expand several times. There's a reason Barnes is on on the 4th attempt to find a geometry that reliably expands (X, TSX, TTSX, LRX) and it's not because they've worked great. It's because the design is severely challenged in that regard.

You must not have shot any. Last one that was iffy was in the 90s an X.

I've shot so much game with TTSX its not even funny. Probably on the order of 250 plus game animals so far. Thats way more impressive a list to have zero fails with those bullets than any other I've tried so far. Lehigh are not far behind.

Of course most folks have no clue what expansion looks like on animals shot with barnes. You won't get a bit exit hole usually. but it will certainly be larger than caliber and thats expansion.

Last deer shot was a few weeks ago. 127 lrx. Due to angle had to shoot further back than I wanted. Ran towards us about 30 yards and fell over. The bullet hit and exited about liver area... shot was close to 200 yards.

Like I said they are the best performing single bullet I've ever seen while guiding big game.

I have seen all versions except the LRX fail to expand. Nice try though I'm sure now that people are starting to use them I'll see LRX failures too.

They're not the worst bullets, but to pretend they don't have a problem is stupid. They do have a problem, and they've been trying to fix it for years with limited success.

Please elaborate with your experience how you deem a bullet did not expand?

Also, can you give more detail with specific examples of what bullets did not expand and what they were shot into.