Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters I will not use a 175 ELD X on game again

This may have been a 1x occurance, but I will not use a 175 ELD X on game ever again. I shot a cow Elk about 450 pounds live weight low, behind the shoulder at 247 yards with my 7 PRC.

Missed the heart. Tracked her for a little over 1/2 mile. Jumped her 2x after backing off for 1 hour and then again after backing off for 2 hours. Was finally able to get a neck shot in her while she was laying down.

The entrance was almost big enough to put my fist in. There was another whole near the arm pit. Maybe a stick tore that open? Don't know. No exit.

She left an easy to follow blood trail but it started to snow and luckily found her just when it started to come down hard.

My MV is about 2950 fps. These are factory loads since I have not hand loaded for it yet.

What was the internal damage like?

No penetration to speak of. I think I hit a major vessel. Sge was dropping large clots along the trail.

Any chance the bullet went sideways from hitting something before it hit the elk? I like to shoot for the heart, but circumstance may dictate aiming a bit higher to allow some room for error.

Don’t suppose she ran towards the truck; they never do….

I guess it's possible the bullet hit something but it appeared to be a clean shot. The person I was hunting with verified a perfectly clear shot. Before and after I shot. He had binoculars on her. She ran up and along a steep slope with lots of blow downs.

No experience on elk, but if you missed the vitals, the only thing that’s going to kill it is blood loss from the muscle wound. I have, unintentionally, made similar hits on whitetail and had to spend a lot of time finding them in briar patches that even Brer Rabbit would avoid.

I agree but that does not explain the fist size entrance hole

I saw similar results with 178 ELDx's from a .308 and .30-06 on my last trip to Newfoundland. Terrible penetration and near disintegration of the bullets.
The majority of people didn't seem to believe me.
I'll never use them.

Strange things can happen with any bullet, and a sample of one shouldn’t hold too much weight.

Having said that, I’ve been happy with the on-game performance of the 180 ELD-M at a similar launch speed.

I am so glad we found her. I will use what I have left at the range. Will never hunt with them. I had no time to hand load before this hunt since I got the rifle from my gunsmith a few weeks before the trip. Never had a bullet do that before.

Could have been a fluke, hard to say with a single occurrence. Conversely, had you hit higher up in the vitals the kind of performance you describe would have likely made for a dramatic quick kill with the lungs looking like they’d been in a blender.

How much do the ELD-X's differ in construction from the old AMAX? I shoot 162 AMAX's (got a PILE of them) and my results are usually "no visible entry or exit - deer just fell over, insides are jelly" - I have to hunt hard to find the entry/exit holes and I punch shoulders.

I’ve never been impressed with Hornady bullets performance on elk. Barnes TTSX and Trophy Bonded Bear Claw and the Federal clones are on my elk menu. YMMV

I killed a big bull last year with my old 700 .30-06 and 168 gr TTSX.

My son, who was hunting with me this year and helped track the wounded cow, used that rifle to kill his cow at 350 yards with the same load. Went through the shoulder and almost made an exit on the opposite shoulder.

His cow was about 450 pounds too.

This would be a good time to set up your own bullet test , duplicating as much as possible the conditions of the wounding. Since it's difficult to duplicate a test media, maybe fire some Accubonds or Nosler Partitions or anything you have confidence in, as a control into whatever media you use.
I got interested in testing bullets back in Finn Aagaards day, and arranged for a rancher friend to call me when a cow died...I learned some things from shooting carcasses, mostly that it wasn't fun finding bullets, LOL. One thing I learned, you can almost duplicate a hide, meat and bone media by packing stout cardboard boxes with melting snow...almost slush...with one slick magazine like the American Rifleman in front, stacking them end to end. I copied Aagaards use of the Rem CoreLokt as a control bullet during the tests. I won't bore you with my findings, flawed or not, as they may be. But as a result of my experiences and observation...I now own no magnums, and my bullet inventory for many cartridges reflect the "standard" weights for same. I am convinced high velocity introduces random unpredictable events in bullet behavior, things impossible to quantify, rpms and violent deceleration being just two.

I've killed two big game species with the 143 gr ELD-X and both were dead right there. One was 700 yards and the other was 470 yards. Meanwhile, I shot two whitetail with them. One I was unable to recover, little to no blood trail, despite me watching the animal fall over and get back up. I assume I missed the heart and took one lung. The other had virtually no entrance and no exit hole at all. It went about 25 yards after being shot, but there was no blood trail to speak of. Both shoots were under 300 yards. I'm starting to have my reservations about the bullet as well. For general whitetail season, I used a Tipped GameKing with better results. Next season I'm going back to bonded or monolithic bullets.

Agree, that Bear Claw is one hell of a bullet with a WIDE impact velocity window.

2950 fps is not really high velocity.

I'm starting out with 175g CoreLokts in my 7mm Rem magnum. Will switch over to 175g A-Frames once my reloading dies, etc. come in. I can use the CoreLokts for practice and use the spent cases for reloading.

Don't think it matters but my 7 PRC is an 8 twist. Texted my man behind the binocular and he once again said it was an absolutely clear shot.