Thread: First fail - 6.5mm 143gr ELD-X

OK fellas I’ve got a technical question to ask the experts.

I’ve been using 6.5mm 143gr ELD-X in my Creedmoor very successfully on goats and red deer for 8 months now. About 220 goats and a dozen or so reds. The deer have all been shot well within 300m, the goats out to 625m.

MV is 2800fps.

A few days ago I had my first complete failure. Shot a small red rising 1 yr old, bit of a runty animal, similar bodyweight to a large billy or smallish fallow. Range was 497m, a deer control mission on low lying farmland. We haven’t been able to get close to these animals due to a lack of cover. It’s either medium range, or spotlighting, which is damn difficult as the flat ground is so wet.

The point of aim was the centre of the shoulder, bullet impacted and knocked the animal clean off its feet. All good I thought and stood up. Impact velocity would have been 2100fps and energy 1400fps.

My mate then told me I needed to go again as about 15-20 seconds later the little deer got up and hobbled off across the face. Long story short, I dicked around trying to get back on target, having made the stupid stupid error of not reloading and staying put in the shooting position. Mate kept the animal in the 85x spotting scope and he could very clearly see it licking at a small exit wound slap bang in the middle of the opposite shoulder. The bullet had passed right through the kill zone and yet there was no respiratory blood on the nose and the animal was stubbornly not going down. As I prepared to take another shot, it hopped up the face and over the ridge and was gone.

By the time we made it back to the homestead to collect the dog it was pissing down like the end of the world. We made it round to the face hardly able to see a thing, dog wasn’t keen. We spent several hours arsing around trying to find that bloody deer, but failed. The next three spurs and gullies are all cleared grazing and there was nowt lying down waiting to be found so that deer must have made it a helluva long way.

I dug the bullet out of the bank behind where the deer was standing:





The bullet now weighs 109gr.

This bullet has a Sectional Density of .291, which is pretty damn high for a small bore. And more energy at 500m than my .308 Win shooting the 178gr ELD-X.

So my question is this – does this bullet and others like it e.g. Accubond LR, have too high a Sectional Density for light skinned little deer? Is it just too much for these animals and prone to over-penetration?

6.5mm 143gr ELD-X at 500m, energy = 1400ft-lbs, velocity = 2100fps, sectional density = 0.293
.308 178gr ELD-X at 500m, energy = 1300 ft-lbs, velocity = 1860fps, sectional density = 0.268

On these numbers, you’d pick the 6.5mm, right? But conventional wisdom says that you’d go with the larger calibre. I’ve already been told by one of the experts that the 6.5mm isn’t up to it at medium range.

I know others use softer bullets for more frangibility e.g. ELD-M in 6.5mm - @gimp is one I think from watching his Film 39 again and reading the comments.

Or was this likely to be a one off complete fluke and just bad luck? I’ve not lost a deer like this for many many years and its feels like stink, put a real downer on proceedings, especially as I would have been able to shoot it again if I’d just kept my brain switched on.

Any ideas or arguments or rants welcome.

Probably just bad luck, wouldn't worry about it, one out of 200 odd animals is pretty good odds

I didn't like the way the ELD-X killed stuff so I switched to ELD-M but it's probably just me being weird and a mental thing

my take on it......sometimes when you are pushing ranges SHIT HAPPENS,you now know from hard experience to reload and be ready to shoot again if needed,sounds to me like you hit "the void" area......eg just above vital bits and just below spine.... well documented fail spot.... sometimes deer goes down like hit by lightening due to shock hitting spine but gets up and buggers off again in about a minute or less..... as for the recovered projectile.......it was 500 mtrs away so you got to expect it to be loosing some expansion...if as I suspect you sailed on through void on what was a light animal to begin with you cant expect projectile to do anymore than it did....to put it another way it encountered about same resistance as going through a hare or rabbit....if it had expanded MORE then if you had hit bigger animal it would blow up on shoulder and not penertrate. hells bells most fellas would be happy with that sort of expansion and weight retention at 50 yards. dont kick your self too hard ,just learn from it and shift point of aim forwards a bit maybe..... said it before and will say it again...take out the front wheels and they aint going anywhere....

Exactly the topic I did not need to read haha. Looking at buying some pills for my 260 as want something as a 1 pill does all but last thing I want to deal with is an animal getting up at long range and walking off.

Originally Posted by superdiver

Exactly the topic I did not need to read haha. Looking at buying some pills for my 260 as want something as a 1 pill does all but last thing I want to deal with is an animal getting up at long range and walking off.

I think @gimp has a good point, says me making myself feel better, the rifle's log book has got an estimated 220 goats and a certifiable 12 reds to its name. (Lose count on the goats sometimes.) Until this happened, I hadn't considered the ELD-X as anything other than damn effective. I certainly am not hinting to you fellas not to use them, it is just the one fail so far.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

my take on it...... dont kick your self too hard ,just learn from it and shift point of aim forwards a bit maybe..... said it before and will say it again...take out the front wheels and they aint going anywhere....

Yup there's been a lot of learning alright, you never stop even after what, 36 years of centrefires now? Stupid, rookie error, over confident after a morning of systematically knocking goats off faces at the same kind of range.

I've been wondering about the void. Like to think I've got a pretty good handle on anatomy, I never got to see it in the spotting scope which is a very nice x85 Vortex but my shooting buddy gave me a running commentary something along the lines of "I can't fuckin' believe its still standing.... you've hit it bang on.... bugger me it still hasn't gone down.... oh dear its just popped over the ridgeline". He drew a blue mark on this picture on the ipad, from what he could see.



Out of interest, here's three recovered ELD-X. The first two killed their animals on the spot.

OK so up close(majority of my hunting) they explode??

im using them in my 260. you have done well so far with them. any bullet is likely to have a failure with that many shots through it. awesome work.

take a look approx 2" above your blue mark and maybe a flyshit forwards...

Originally Posted by superdiver

OK so up close(majority of my hunting) they explode??

I wouldn't say explode, but they certainly shed a lot of weight, depending on what you hit. The one in the photo at 113m went through the spine, liquefied the front lungs and lodged in the brisket. From my point of view (steeply above the animal) it was the perfect kill. The red dot next to the spine is the entry, between the shoulder blades.



Most of the time at shorter ranges I shoot to disable them immediately as its damn steep where I hunt and scrubby as hell with impossible deep papa ravines and gorges. Once they're down in those recovery is nigh on impossible. So a broadside soft organs shot is rare, I'll usually shoot for the neck or shoulder blades. Clear country longer range and I'll aim for the shoulder at the midline, front line of the foreleg.

I wouldn't lose to much faith in the ELD X as most brands of cup and core type projectiles will have the odd failure. The important thing is to be ready for that odd failure and make sure if it's still standing shoot again. Going by your kills thus far I would be thinking they are a deadly bullet, I am going to use them in my new 6.5x55 when it comes back from getting the suppressor fitted.

Thanks for writing this up in such detail Flyblown, as the outcome of the hunt aside, has provided an excellent thread topic.

I've also seen the immediate drop from shock to the spine followed by recovery several times, and the blue area looks about right and also back from there to the diaphragm, staying just under the spine, while in this strip being in the thinner less vascular edges of the lungs.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

take a look approx 2" above your blue mark and maybe a flyshit forwards...

Forward and above is through the shoulder blade (perhaps a little tricky to see on the diagram) which will hopefully promote sufficient disintegration on the near side to spread a fair bit of damage around beyond for a quick bleed out.

@Flyblown how have you found the eldx up close on smaller bodied animals?

yip puffin but on a runty yearling resistance would be akin to solid hit on a hare......or stuff all. just one of those minties moments I reckon. the man has put in huge effort in what sounds like appauling conditions to see if animal was recoverable...hats off to him for that. an inch either way and it wouldve gone down like lead balloon .

Ive shot many deer and Tahr with my 6.5x55 using 140 grn Amax (and somme with 140 Gamekings). Ive shot them out to 500 yards. Of maybe 100 animals I have only had one fail which was a Amax surface blow up at about 150 yards on a nannie Tahr. MV of 2840 fps.

But I have always said and learned through experience that the 6.5 can be a slow killer past approx 350 yards. Its likely the high SD and the bullet zipping through combined with slightly poor shot placement.
A myriad of things can go wrong at longer ranges and in this regard the 6.5 caliber is not immune and certainly not magic.

If you want to kill stuff consistently at longer ranges I would be stepping up in caliber and case size, but even then you will still get the odd unexplained failure.

I think.

Originally Posted by superdiver

@Flyblown how have you found the eldx up close on smaller bodied animals?

I haven't used the ELD-X much up really close. I shot 5 goats in quick succession last week up the one gully between 140m and about 280m IIRC, that's about as close as the ELD-X is used really. They just bang flop and roll down hill. There's been 2 or 3 closer range goats shot off-hand last summer, those goats were all about 60-70m downslope below me, and I haven't bothered to climb down and see what the damage was like. It's not like they were complaining, instant lights out.

All my close range work is with heavy, soft frangible bullets, e.g. 180gr Sierra ProHunters in .308, I find them very forgiving of shot placement e.g. if the animal is on the move. For middling kind of work I use a .243 and Sierra ProHunters, have for years now as per other current thread, perfect blend of accuracy and frangibility for the typical NZ deer, be it in the engine room or the neck. I trialed ELD-X last summer in the new 6.5mm purely for the high BC for the specific application - shooting across the gullies to get at the damn goats. And despite the recent one failure, I won't be changing.