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.