Thread: 162gn ELDX not expanding

Originally Posted by Pongo12

Yeap they are average. 4 stags 4 shots yesterday using vlds. 10m 120m 30m and 200mno dramas

I'll say this Pongo, you might like the VLDs, all power to you, but fact is that its quite a divisive bullet with an iffy reputation. That Berger design is fussy as... we refused to use VLDs on our property after failures to expand at longer ranges, and lost deer. We proved to our satisfaction at least it was down to bullet design, not shooter error. I've got a stack of info on that particular design... not really looking to go into battle on it here... but I might change my mind.



That said, my view is that 80% of the time, hunters blame their bullets for fuck ups. Natural enough... More often than not because they are too hard and don't expand if they meet low resistance- usually a case of hitting too far back. Shot placement is everything. Yes there are some general principles to abide by when selecting bullets for our game animals, but our goats and deer are neither too small or too large to cause many problems, and they are pretty easy to kill with anything from a 40gr SP out of a .22-250, to a 500gr cast boolit out of a .45-70 Govt.... As long as the bullet goes in the right place...

Actual test data, interesting reading, our failures to expand were with 7mm VLDs at around 550m-600m:

https://www.fieldandstream.com/long-...hootout#page-2

For every fail we read about here, there must be hundreds if not thousands of successful clean kills, that's my take on it.