Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Is the Hornady ELD-X .284 150 gr. bullet a good choice for elk?

Good discussion. After much thought I'm going to regain my common sense and forget all the marketing hype of these new bullets and just fall back on what I know works from personal experience. That being the tried and true Nosler Partition.

Bounced off? I don't know. Penetrated? I don't know. Elk ran strong for 1/4 mile, searched rest of day, nothing. Watched thru spotting scope as bullet hit shoulder. Sounded like a solid hit. So you tell me.

I’ll throw my 2 cents in here. My 14 year old has been shooting 150 ELDXs at for the past two seasons and so far they accounted for 1 antelope buck, a small 6 point bull and a cow. Nothing was shot any closer than 150 to 200 yards. He’s shooting a Tikka 7mmRM but he’s just a kid so they’re watered down to about 2,850 fps so that the recoil is manageable. Antelope about 200 yards, pass through, 2” exit wound. Small 6 point x broken horn about 150 to 200 yards (early morning and things were happening fast so no rangefinder used) again behind the from shoulder, complete pass through, 2” exit. Cow at about 350, one pass through and one through both rear legs which hit 2 big bones was caught in the elk. Mostly still together but it had shed may 40% of it’s weight.

My opinion of these bullets is that they’re highly accurate and have good BCs. They hold together pretty well and produce kills if the velocity is kept relatively low. I’m not sure they would hold up very well at higher velocities and short ranges. I think they have better BCs than the 150 Ballistic Tips but aren’t really any tougher. I’m a big 7mm fan and primarily an elk hunter so I think that the 280 AI is a great elk cartridge but if you’re going to be in an area where you might be shooting big elk at short ranges with full house loads, I would look at tougher bullets.

BTW, in my opinion, the 150 Swift Sciroccos are crazy good bullets. They open up well at least down to 2,000 fps or so and work well at long range and at closer ranges they smash bone and blow nice exit big exit holes. I’ve never recovered one in a critter shot at less than about 400 yards except for a whitetail buck shot in the neck straight down the spine. The bullet broke about 10 or 11 veribrate and the came to rest in the spinal column. Diameter of the bullet was about 1 1/4” and still had about 80% weight retention. The buck fell over like a mannequin.

Shoot what you are confident in. Eldx doesn't fit that confidence quotient for me.

One bit of advice . Be prepared for a close shot of under 150yds. Practice off hand shooting. . It is very likely you will get a close shot where off hand shooting will be your only choice. Many talk about long range shooting but reality is close in shooting happens. Be prepared.

What did everybody do, before we were blessed with high bc bullets? They just killed stuff and never worried about it.

I killed the bull in the pic above at 200 yards or so. Close to 3k MV so the bullet was still humming right along.



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My tried-and-true load for this .280 has been the 140 gr. Barnes TTSX, with comparable accuracy to the ELD-X, but the Hornady bullet offers better wind drift numbers.

168 NBT out of my brother’s .30-06. Behind the shoulder. 20 foot recovery.

Just sayin’.





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