Thread: 6.5CM bullet performance

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

projectile placement is just as important.....way back in 1900 and nuts n bolts using fmj in 303 was still quite common..hit big billy goat or even small nanny through both shoulders was much more effective than slipped in through ribs.
if your worried your projectile may be a little too hard..give it something to work on..smash some bone.
workmate uses the whitetail in same and has large run of single round kills..granted all are under 200 yards...but he sure doesnt overthink it..just point ,shoot,then drive truck over and pick up (he shot red hind with me the other week and moaned it was too far away as we had to drag it 200 yards to truck lol) Im sure you will do fine with what you have got,we all seem to overthink this way too much these days.

Yep, placement is still the deciding factor.
I took my old man out for a hunt when he was visiting from Oz over christmas, 6.5 creedmoor bergara singleshot with 143 ELD-X up the spout. Found him a red spiker tucked up asleep, quartering towards us uphill but head facing downhill and away from us at 150m, neck shot was taken (I personally would have still tried for lungs and heart). Perfect bang flop, only for the deer to stand up and trot to the bush edge when we had walked 100m closer. Almost lost the animal but he got it with a followup (more lessons learnt, he didnt put a second up the spout ready like I told him to) Turns out the first shot went in through the neck and out through the opposite jaw without expanding and missing absolutely everything arterial. Completely unexpected result, caused the old man to have a lack of faith in the projectile and sent him on a big rabbit hole of research trying to find the right projectile to reload with based on his experience and knowledge of hunting smaller game 30 years ago, looking up all kinds of Nosler this and that.

Later on with a bit of a google up to get my facts right I tried to school him on ideal shot placement for deer and the virtues of the hilar and shoulder shot, frangible match bullets instead of stouter hunting bullets (not that I think the ELD-X was really at fault here) but he didn't really want a bar of it. I've given up trying to tell him that shooting deer is not like shooting wild dogs in outback Australia, you can't just neck shoot them and expect the hydrostatic shock to do the rest. He's got a real hangup on shooting dogs through the shoulder and having them run hundreds of metres, up to 1k even and often surviving.

Bit of a thread hijack, sorry lads.