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

Cool well that sounds like the bullet did a good job then. In all the years I’ve been shooting deer and other animals I’ll never ceased to be amazed at what an animal that has been mortally wounded can still achieve with four legs, especially the ones who have been heart shot broadside.

I am still battling with the exit or no exit argument, i.e. which is preferable. Have never been able to properly make my mind up. I don’t do much bush hunting and haven’t often needed to track blood trails too far to be honest. If I’m worried about them getting away on me I shoot them in the neck. For many years I have used 6mm Sierra soft points on deer for the simple reason that they penetrate, partially fragment and dump their energy within the vitals, usually coming to a stop against the hide on the other side. I’ve always been amazed at how wide the radius of damage is internally, there is very little chance of bullet fragments not connecting with something vital if you put it in the right place. They don’t blow up at very close range and you can use them effectively to 3 or 400 m without any difficulties. They have been a fantastic and clean killing bullet for me for 30yrs. I think it also helps not to drive them too fast.

When I’ve run into problems, most often it has been using hard big game bullets on deer or even cattle and pigs. Like I mentioned the other day on scrub cattle in NT, pass throughs were normal unless it hit staunch bone. I had a few runners up there with the Norma Oryx despite pretty good placement, after hitting one bull straight through the lungs and out the other side with a .308 Oryx, and it running well over half a mile, I said fuck this and changed to 180gr Sierra ProHunter soft points and didn’t have any cattle or pigs make more than a few yards after that.

But its very subjective eh, who knows maybe I was just shooting rubbish and decided subconsciously to up my game cos when cattle beast takes more than two steps the ‘straylian blokes don’t miss a chance to rub it in... mind you most of them were freakin’ hopeless. But that’s another story altogether.

So the ELD-X has been a bit of an eye opener, very reliable for me with the one exception. On deer and goats, broadside, it always exits. Which kind of goes against my preferences historically. Shooting an animal long ways, it won’t exit necessarily and if you look at the picture of the 3 bullets and the 3 ranges, you can see why it probably wouldn’t exit sub-300m. I’ve shot big billies face on at close-ish range and pole-axed them but the ELD-X hasn’t exited out the back end. And that’s a good thing to my way of looking at things, I want to do as much damage as possible if I’m shooting them long ways cos I’m concerned about being an inch off either way, which can be a big problem at that angle.