Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 180 Hornady Innerlock

You should be fine with that bullet in an '06

Close to 30 years ago I shot a calf elk quartering away with one in a 300 Weatherby. Only thing I found was an empty jacket right under the skin at the front of the neck. Some might call that a failure, but that calf elk never knew it, DRT at 65 yards. I would think that you would have a tough time finding a better 180 gr bullet to use in a 30-06

Never shot an elk with that bullet,but I agree with jaycee. Just damn hard to find a better 180 for the 06. It's like it was designed for 06 velocities. It is far and away my favorite bullet for the 30/06 for general purpose hunting. Affordable and accurate. They have shot very well for me in a half dozen different 06s. 100 in a box and they won't break the bank. The only failure I've had any proof of was on a running whitetail buck. He was a stout fella to begin with,and less than 50 yards out. I took him through both shoulders with that bullet,out of a 300 Win mag. Too much smoke on her I guess. Dropped him like a bad habit. Both shoulders were destroyed. Shattered the bones,and the bullet. It did exit,but there were jacket fragments present. I'd wager the core was all that made it through. At 06 velocity,I'd expect a lot better performance.

Man, I can't believe the size of that eland, congrats!

Yeah big, and they are also noted for being hard to put down. Obviously, something on the order of a .338 Mag or .375 H&H would have been better suited than my lowly .30-'06.

BUT ... the finest rifle for the job is the one that's in your hands.

Anyway, we flew from Portland to Johannesburg, in goodness knows how many hours and we were exhausted. Our PH was right on time, hustled us through the Jo'burg-Pretoria Airport and then we drove umpteen miles to far northern RSA.

We were just driving up to our camp when the assistant guide, Kjeld, ran out and asked us if anyone was up to killing a huge, over-age eland bull.

The eland in question was twenty-six years old, the original bull on the large property and he had developed a habit of killing other bulls. The story was that the ancient bull could no longer breed his harem of cows, but didn't want his ladies to accept the affections of any other bull.

True or not, the land owner offered him to me at half-price, just to kill the old guy. He was fed up with having the old bull killing younger ones ... so he had to be killed. From my perspective, as exhausted as I was, being able to harvest a "Blue Bull" was incredible ... and at the cost of $400, it was double-incredible.

Oh yeah, he had a name; he was called Madala, Afrikaans for "Old Man."

Anyway, a game guard knew precisely where he was NOW and would I go in and kill him .... please.

I was half dead, but I grabbed my rifle and off we went. We drove a couple of miles and the game guard got all excited and pointed to a baobab tree. The last place he saw Madala.

We got out of the Cruiser and started following fresh eland tracks (that Stevie Wonder could have followed). After about a quarter mile of slow, quiet stalking, the game guard motioned that he heard something (turned out that it was the arthritis in the Madala's knees and ankles that made a popping sound).

We knelt and I got ready.

Maybe one minute later, he walked up the trail and quartered, right to left, towards us. He first appeared at about fifty yards and slowly, painfully walked to 35 yards ... and stopped.

I was in awe; he was frackin' HUGE.

I aimed at the junction of neck and the left shoulder and squeezed off a round. In the scope, I could see him flip over on his back, all four hooves in the air ... and the hooves were not moving.

He was dead, dead, dead in a microsecond.

There were only three of us; the PH, the gameguard and me and we absolutely could not push him over for the hero photos. We radioed out and the farm manager sent a truck with the big pipe tripod, a chain-hoist and lots of Black Power. Still, he was enormous and hard to handle.

My PH had never seen an eland die like that (me neither, but it was my first eland ), so we did an autopsy, once we got the bull back to the butchery.

My lowly 180-grain Interlocked had penetrated the incredibly thick eland hide and hit a vertebrae between the shoulder blades. It literally broke the 10-inch wide vertebrae, coursed across the spinal cord (measured in inches wide) and exited the smashed vertebrae.

The bullet, still looking like the "deadliest mushroom in the woods" was lodged under the far hide of the eland.

Incredible, totally incredible.

We also found two 9.3 bullets and a single .375. Madala had been carrying around the bullets of failed hunts for a while.

A few hours later, I slept ... and slept ... and slept. A happy man.

Madala is on our trophy room wall and I'm looking at him right now. He's about fifteen feet away ... looking at him and remembering the hunt, it's priceless.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My hunting partner, Dave was not so lucky. He killed a bull eland, but it was one of those cluster-f thingies.

Dave was using his .30-06 with 180 Partitions. His bull was young enough to not have worn his horns down, but old enough to have attained some size. He weighed 1,200 pounds in the butchery.

The first shot was center shoulder and this basically pissed off the bull. He ran at the hunter and PH and both got a bullet in his ass as he ran by. This led to a running firefight of about three miles.

Ultimately, Dave and his PH came upon his eland bull. The bull could not hop the game fence on the boundry of the farm. He'd tried to run through it and eventually was stopped by the tracking dog ... a boerboel.

Boerboel means "farmdog," about 220 pounds of same. Anyway the huge dog had the bull eland by the lips and was not letting go. The dog was totally covered in eland blood ....

That's about the time I showed up. Dave was fixing to kill the eland for good and his PH was trying to see that it got done without killing Condor the boerboel. Eventually, the PH shot the bull behind the ear and the bull fell down without crushing either dog or men.

Condor, the boerboel, started puking and puking. Solid blood from the eland bleeding out the mouth and nose. Then Condor walked over and pissed on the eland ... and slowly tottered away.

Here is a photo of a boerboel. It's a dog you would want to be your friend ... and absolutely not your enemy.



Well friends, that's your Christmas Eland Story. It's a good one and totally true.

Blessings,

Steve



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Steve it is GREAT having you back at Fire. The eland is an amazingly huge critter and that Boer farm dog is downright scary looking.

+1

Great write-up,,I'm a big fan of interlocks myself.

Condor is an impressive dog for sure,we have never had a dog around here that didn't earn his keep. Condor would be a great dog to keep the brown bears well (better) behaved around here.

Jim

I won't lie. I'm scared of that dog.

Awesome story!

So the Partition did nothing on the shoulder shot? What happened?

Have used 180 Interlocks for cow elk and whitetails out of a 308 Norma Mag. Have used 180 Pro Hunter, 180 Partitions, and I prefer the Hornadys. Seems to put critters in the dirt at a little over 3000 fps. Won't worry about performance at all with this bullet! Just My 2 Cents

But would a 180 Interlock be enough for a boerboel?

I took a nice cow on 1/14/15 with the 30/06 and 180 Hornady InnerLock bullet loaded to just over 2800 fps out of my 24" bbl. I hit her four times at about 200 yds. I keep shooting until they are down. Three bullets were recovered under the hide on the far side. Picture perfect mushrooms. My first shot had put a silver dollar sized hole through the lungs. She started to run so I shot her again, that shot stopped her but she was still standing. It took two more shots to put her down although she was dead on her feet. It was late so no pictures were attempted.
Bullet #1 Retained weight 134 gr. expanded diameter .730"
" " #2 " " " " 129.5 grs. " " " " .715"
" " #3 " " " " 130 grs. " " " " .6185"
Estimated impact velocity 2450fps.