Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Hornady 73 grain ELD

Has anyone had any luck making these things shoot?

I tried em awhile back with Leverevolution and that didn't work. I found a box of them yesterday and decided to try them again but have yet to find a good report on them. If you've found the secret load recipe let's hear it.

nope. I'm in search of that 1/2 moa rifle and load, I keep hearing about. These 73gr. eldm's, just aren't cutting it:



back to the drawing board..

I tried them with RL-15 and Ramshot TAC and got a few 5 round groups around MOA, maybe slightly larger, but none showed promise of being extremely accurate. I honestly forgot I even had them until I saw this. Probably going to load some more and try them again with Varget and play with the seating depth a little more.

My best load so far with them:

73gr ELD
LC Brass
CCI 400's or BR4's
24.5gr RL-15
2.260" COAL

5 shot groups? Well, if we are talking 5 shot groups, even my Noveske shoots the 73gr eldm into less than an inch. I know the op likes 10 shot groups though..

You shooting them in your Montana? Try RL15 or AR Comp

No since these were designed for mag length I bought em for my AR's. I have better bullets for the Montana.

I will try some RL15 and see how they do.

If you can get some AR comp, give that a try. It meters better than RL15. Let us know how they shoot for you. I was hooked on 69gr sierras, until i tried the 73gr eldm.

I don't know that it applies to these at all, but some of the Hornady bullets in the past, at least .224, did not like to get kicked in the seat all that hard.

On another note at one point the amax had issues on presses sometimes, if the next batch I got would not shoot well, I'd measure the OAL of the bullet, if it was longer than X, and I forget X, I'd send em back. Under X and they shot really well.

TWR - try ~23.5 gr of 8208 or Benchmark with a WSR primer and play with seating depth a bit. I haven't played with these enough to say 100% yet, but they seem to like the same load that is really good with the 75gr BTHP (although OAL will be different of course). In a 16" barrel that should run ~2675-2700 fps, YMMV.

Hope that helps.

For now I loaded some with RL15 and Fed 205 match primers instead of my usual CCI 41's. I've read they can be real picky on seating depth so we will see. I'll pick up some 8208 Thursday, already have WSR's so it won't be any trouble to try.

I just gotta find time to shoot now, matches coming up, trying to get started hunting again and I was born good looking instead of rich so work gets in the way a lot.

I picked up a box of them a couple weeks ago.
I've been running 26.0 grn. of Leverevolution under 75BTHP's, figured I'd start there. I've been running Lever over 205's, thought I'd try the 400's as I'm sitting on a pile of them.
I've also been running the 75's out of a windowed PMag, prolly try the same with the 73's.

I'd like to try Lever and TAC, but no more than I get to shoot anymore, it may take a bit...........I seemingly suffer the same curse as TWR.......

Lever is good for velocity in bolt guns but I don't like it in my ARs. Full pressure Leverevolution loads produce a lot of gas and cycle an AR pretty hard, unless you've adjusted the gas for that particular load. Once you do that though, it generally won't cycle anything else. A rifle that cycles an 8208 load ends up way overgassed with an equivalent pressure load of Lever.

I don't have a real big basis for comparison on that. I've got an SLR adj. block on my AR. Last time I shot it, I ran 75's over Lever and 55's over H335. They both seemed to cycle fine without being over gassed, and that was suppressed. I'm not doing mag-dumps and pretty much treat it like a bolt action as far as rate of fire.
Bear in mind, I've not shot a lot of other AR's suppressed with other handloads. I suppose it could be comparatively terrible, and I wouldn't know the difference.........

Not sure where you're going with those comments Potsy. Overgassed or not has nothing to do with mag dumps or rate of fire, it's about timing the gas system for optimal function with your ammo. Your first clue about how it's tuned is the ejection pattern, if brass lands forward of 3:00-3:30 to your right, the gun is overgassed. Having an adjustable gas block also has nothing to do with it, unless you're adjusting it specifically for the Lever loads. All of mine have adjustable gas blocks too.

An AR that will cycle an 8208 load or any 223-spec load at all, will be pretty overgassed with a full charge of Leverevolution. That powder is just a touch slow in burn rate and produces more gas than most other 5.56 loads, and the difference is more than the AR platform was intended to compensate for. It's not going to blow up your gun, but it will beat it up a bit more.

Probably beats up your brass too doesn't it Yondering? Do you get ejector swipes with it?

Didn't have anything eject forward of 3:00.

In terms of rate of fire, I just meant I'm running off of a bench, not randomly spraying and praying, should have been clearer on that.
I forget exactly where my SLR is set (I think I'm set either 5 or 7 clicks from bottomed out, and it has 12 or 14 clicks total, but I'm working off memory), but I adjusted it just where the bolt would lock back, it happened to work with the 55 grain loads as well, but I may not be that lucky all the time (like on a really cold day).
I also have a Bravo Company M16 bolt carrier and a spikes mid weight buffer, which should help slow things down just a bit.

As far as examining brass, I can't prove anything there, I'm running a batch of Remington .223 "once fired" brass from Brassman, and some of that came in pretty beat up. I will say I don't have any dents on shoulders or case bodies.

I'd not argue that somebody had issues with it, and it doesn't take much to have more experience than I, I've just not noticed it being an issue.

I admit that I definitely notice that the gun recoils more (or more like, "bounces around more") with 75's than with 55's, but how much of that is the actual recoil difference between 55's and 75's and how much of that is the LeveRevolution throwing my bolt carrier around at breakneck speeds, I couldn't say. I've never run 75's with anything else.

Like I said, when I get around to loading a few, I'll try Lever and TAC as well. Bought a few pounds of it back before the election I need to run through something.....

Yes, it gives typical signs of early unlocking (swipes, sometimes extractor marks, etc). Different than high pressure signs of course, although some guys confuse those.

Potsy - rate of fire has nothing to do with how your gas system needs to be tuned, assuming we're not talking about full auto. It just has no bearing on the conversation.

As to the rest of it - I offered you advice based on years of experience. Feel free to pay attention or not.

I slept in and went to the range instead of calling critters this morning. Had a few scopes to get solid zeros and a few new loads to try.

The 24.5 RL-15 load with the 73's surprised me. I shot 10 rounds and 7 of those 10 were a ragged hole but the other 3 opened it up to 1.75 or so. Now I again forgot my front rest and used a ski mask shoved full of gloves and stuff, it worked pretty well but I just knew I pulled those 3 off. So I set up the chronograph and loaded 10 more. After getting my custom bag settled down I felt comfy enough to shoot the best group of my life. I ended up a little over 2" and the chronograph only read a little over 2500 fps. I was really disappointed in myself but I'm gonna try again with TAC or 8208 if I can find any. My TAC load with 77 gr NCC's ran just over 2600 fps and grouped 5 just at an inch in my Colt pencil barrel which was a pleasant surprise.

That's why I don't use Varget or RL15 with mid-75-ish gr bullets in the 5.56 - even at max loads it gives up at least 150+ fps to 8208 or Benchmark, and up to 300 fps to ball powders like TAC, CFE223, etc. Yes, accuracy is the most important, but I've always been able to achieve equal or better accuracy with other powders anyway.

TAC will do 2850 with a 75gr BTHP in a 16" barrel without working the brass hard, but I get better accuracy from Benchmark.

The 75 BTHP's are faster but I've never had any luck making them shoot as good as a 77 OTM.

I used to use Benchmark till I got beat in both accuracy and velocity with TAC, it's been my standby for several years now.