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

Originally Posted by Flyblown

No blood or bits whatsoever, though it was sluicing down by the time we got there. Nonetheless, the hound just went round in circles. Bullet was about 2 inches into a soft bank, didn't take much finding. Dug around for more bits of bullet but didn't come up with anything.

Mate says he could clearly see a small exit hole and I spoke to him again this evening and he is adamant that the exit was lower than the "gap" we've been talking about. If you've used a 85x spotting scope you'll know how much detail you can see at 500. Also the angle, shooting uphill at a moderate angle, probably 5° max.

I've just done a little bit of work on the bullet and pulled back the petals, there's dirt in there, underneath. So the petals seem to have folded back in the dirt. Failure to properly expand (maybe) at 2100fps on a fallow sized animal would kinda blow a bit of a hole in Hornady's 1800fps picture on their ELD-X website. But that's all conjecture, at the end of the day.

The pill still needs to hit something substantial to expand, on a small animal the point you indicated is pretty thin. I have seen everything from 223 to 300 win mag 180 gainers go through the soft part of a goat and not expand.

After so many animals with one failure I would say your bullets are working a treat.