Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Caught a 143 ELD-X last night

A pretty good (for this property) buck stepped out last night at last light and I shot him quartering-to at 90 yards with my HMR 6.5CM. I was doing my last-minute scans with my binoculars, as seeing deer that late with the naked eye was not much of an option on the big pipeline I was hunting. Deer generally are seen at 200-500 yards. I could see this guy was past his ears when he stepped out, but that was about all I could make out in the last few minutes of legal light. Flipped the illumination dial on the Bushnell LRTSi as I pointed it out the window and that made things much simpler. He bolted at the shot and I heard him crash a few seconds later.

I tagged him in the forward portion of the onside shoulder (red speck in the pic). He made it about 50 yards. No blood trail, but I knew the general area where I thought he'd gone silent.



Flipping him over revealed the telltale lump about 5 inches in front of his hip on the opposite side, so I sliced the hide and pulled out the bullet. It was 55.4gr of jacket.






Impact speed should have been about 2,630fps. I imagine it would have exited on a broadside shot, but this quartering angle stopped it under the hide.

I'd have liked to have seen some core retention, but dead is dead. Didn't get to see the internal damage as I ran this one to the processor 5 miles down the road. Other deer I have dressed out showed the 143ELD-X to behave much like other cup/cores at similar speeds from a 7mm-08 or .308.