Hornady ELD-X sections

Fellas

Couple of threads here and elsewhere have reported problems with 7mm (.284") 162gr ELD-X. We had @Nick.m and @Troy Tempest reporting less than ideal knock-down, and I've seen it on a couple of other forums as well. This kind of contradicted what others have been experiencing, like me with the 6.5mm (.264") 143gr and .308" 178gr, and @Mooseman with the .308" 200gr ELD-X, amongst others.

Problem with our comparisons, is there are way too many variables to be truly objective. For starters, I'm trying to argue away 7mm problems based on my 6.5mm experience. Not the same bullet. Then of course we have animal weight, animal species, point of impact, angle of impact, which way the moon was facing and the position of the tide....

So its hard to compare experiences, objectively, I think you'll agree. I've written up my 143gr 6.5mm experiences before, around 300 goats and a dozen reds with it so far. I've only shot two reds with the 178gr in the .308 Win, my Tikka doesn't like them a great deal but both of those animals were poleaxed with front lower shoulder shots at ~150m.

Here's a photo of sectioned bullets, the 200gr and 178gr in .30 cal, the 162gr in 7mm and the 143gr in 6.5mm. It's a prick of a thing to take a photo of, the shadows are a right pain. The photo is slightly off-centre due to shadow problems... not exactly a pro photographer, right?

Attachment 110906

I've gotten the sections as close to the mid-line as I can, so as not to overly skew the relative thickness of the jackets. Two observations, comparing them against each other:

(1) the 143gr 6.5mm has a thinner jacket on the ogive, relative to its overall size, compared to the others
(2) the 162gr 7mm has a thicker jacket on the ogive, relative to its overall size, compared to the others
(3) the 200gr .308" has a thicker jacket dimensions all round than the 178gr .308"

I've measured these as best I can with the calipers and the above is a pretty reasonable assessment I think.

I guess if you could reach any kind of conclusion from this amateur effort, taking into account all the variables that make every shot different to every other shot, you might say that the 7mm bullet looks a bit tougher for its weight than the rest.

What I can say is - like @Mooseman said - is that the supposed "interlock ring" is scarcely visible. In fact, I think its bollocks because I can't hardly see it at all on these sections and I'm inspecting them with the magnifying glass. I'm gonna take it up with Hornady, because I like that kind of thing.

I don't know what the circumstances were with these 7mm problems, my gut feel and no offence to the shooters at all, is that usually on our relatively soft deer the shot placement is 90% of the equation. Even properly hard bullets will drop deer quickly if they're put into the front part of the engine room, but directly in or above the heart, or just behind the heart in the rear lungs, is a bit of lottery. Angles are of course super important.

Make your own conclusions! I like doing this stuff, and I'm very happy with ELD-X in my calibres so far, can't wait for the 90gr in 6mm.

Good post mate! Back to the sst I reckon

Load up some ELDMs.

Yep nice work @Flyblown you can certainly see the thickness off the jackets especially in the heavy weights. I think the interlock rings aren't there looking at those cross sections and it will be interesting to hear Hornadys response. Me , I still like them and until I have bad fails I will keep using them. I am loading a batch of 7 mm/08 rounds for a friend using the 150 gr ELD X at about 2700 fps. He swears buy them and has shot a number of animals over the last 10 -12 months and hasn't lost one, most are dead on the spot or after a couple of steps. As Flyblown has said bullet placement is key. My mate I load for said one animal required tracking and when found it was hit in the neck, through the meat no bone connected, but it was an easy tracking job with plenty of blood to follow. Of all the ELD X bullets we have cross section the 150 gr 7 mm has faint signs of an inter lock ring.

I’d like to see how the 7mm 150 ELDX stacks up

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Originally Posted by chainsaw

I’d like to see how the 7mm 150 ELDX stacks up

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If anything like the .270 145g eldx they will be brilliant haven't lost an animal yet from 100 yards out to 450 yards all bang flops

The problem is that the deer are too bloody soft!

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Originally Posted by dannyb

If anything like the .270 145g eldx they will be brilliant haven't lost an animal yet from 100 yards out to 450 yards all bang flops

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If your rifle and you like those, I have most of a box my rifle doesn't like, swaps is good (projectiles not the wife!)

Haven't got anything to swap but could be keen to buy em, new rifle getting delivered Sunday comes with some projectiles not sure what I'll keep you posted

I have my order in for the aluminium ELD 6.5 at 153gn.

with regards the the 143 thin copper on the ogive... it means more lead bias to the front moving the COG forward... helps aparantly

A projectiles performance is not consistent across calibers and weights.....If you think about how they are made it is virtually impossible for them to perform the same across all calibers and weights.
Things like this help shed some light for sure.
Not even the same cup is/was used for 30cal amax with a much thicker cup used for the 208/178 than the 168/150.

Mates using 150g in his 7mm08 with mixed results

I have 180eldm in the 7-375r due back in a couple of weeks and will see how they go but have seen good things so far.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

Thanks for posting this mate. I have shot two deer in the last week using the eldx however not reloads (box of factory ammo I’m trying to use up) I haven’t chronied these but imagine they are not moving quite as quick as the reloads. Both deer dropped on the spot, I recovered one projectile. It is fully mushroomed and looks as though it’s nearly breaking up, will post a photo at some point.

As stated I don’t know the speed but wondering if higher velocities are part of the cause of the problems I’ve had in the past?

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Originally Posted by Nick.m

Thanks for posting this mate. I have shot two deer in the last week using the eldx however not reloads (box of factory ammo I’m trying to use up) I haven’t chronied these but imagine they are not moving quite as quick as the reloads. Both deer dropped on the spot, I recovered one projectile. It is fully mushroomed and looks as though it’s nearly breaking up, will post a photo at some point.

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What caliber and what range ?

7mm rem mag 162grn eldx. The projectile I recovered was at 20 yards and the other shot was at 80yards on sika. The recovered projectile was found under the skin on the offside shoulder while the first shot was a neck shot and passed through.

I've never recovered a projectile yet if under 150 yards they seem to explode and cause massive internal damage to organs/bone and out further up to 450 yards I have always had through and throughs again with good damage on the way through, high shoulder always sacks them on the spot no matter what range

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Originally Posted by Nick.m

Thanks for posting this mate. I have shot two deer in the last week using the eldx however not reloads (box of factory ammo I’m trying to use up) I haven’t chronied these but imagine they are not moving quite as quick as the reloads. Both deer dropped on the spot, I recovered one projectile. It is fully mushroomed and looks as though it’s nearly breaking up, will post a photo at some point.

As stated I don’t know the speed but wondering if higher velocities are part of the cause of the problems I’ve had in the past?

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@Nick.m I put some 162 ELD-X Hornady Precision Hunter rounds through a chronograph when I first got my 7mm rem mag. They were averaging about 2950fps from the 24" tikka barrel if that helps.

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Originally Posted by stagstalker

@Nick.m I put some 162 ELD-X Hornady Precision Hunter rounds through a chronograph when I first got my 7mm rem mag. They were averaging about 2950fps from the 24" tikka barrel if that helps.

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Interesting, not a lot of difference in speed ay.

Below are photos of the recovered projectile from the sika stag shot at 20m.
Attachment 111084
Attachment 111085
Attachment 111086

I think the problem may be impact velocity
The Eld-x range is designed to work between 2600fps and 1800fps. Anything closer than 100 with a 7RM you will be exceeding that. Might be worth taking a look at impact velocitys of the rounds that are working well 6.5CM and 308 maybe.

I shot the gong on the weekend at 350 yards with the 300 Win Mag and 270 Win. The interesting thing was the 178 gr and 200 gr 30 cal bullets left noticeably less impact marks than the 145 gr ELD X 270 bullet, that bullet left nasty welts in the steel. I know it was a bit close but I didn't expect that from the 270. We haven't cross sectioned a 270 bullet so might do one day just to see what the jacket is like.

My 270 loads chrono at over 3100 fps with that bullet so the old saying speed kills is true if going by the damage they did to my plate.

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Originally Posted by Mooseman

My 270 loads chrono at over 3100 fps with that bullet so the old saying speed kills is true if going by the damage they did to my plate.

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my 270 eldx load was doing 2940fps no pressure signs but deadly accurate, I would be happy to shoot that out to 600 yards with confidence.
can't wait to see what my new 270wsm will push them like

it is definitely a brilliant round in the mighty 270

That's a good grunty load dannyb it certainly would be fine at that range power wise. This is a picture of my gong plate, as far as I know it's Biz 400 and was at 350 yards ,the top two are the 270 and the top one furthest to the left is the 30 06 and the rest are the 300 Win Mag both 178 gr( 3)Attachment 111165 and a couple of 200 grainers. As can be seen the 300 made welts but the two 270 ones are a bit deeper than the 300 Win.

G'day fellas I've actually spoke about the ELD-X on this forum before and then and still I don't use them because to me they were too unpredictable . now since then I've done a lot of asking around the ridges about who used ELD-X and what they thought about them and the info was that many 308 users said that they were happy with them and rarely had any problems then I asked the 6.5 people and they almost mimicked the 308 people in having no troubles to write home about so then I got in touch with some mates pro shooters and ordinary hunters who use 7mm mag with ELD-X nearly all have had problems with them but out past 300m they had reasonably good kills even in donkeys and bulls and camel so to me this says that velocity is playing out here I tend to agree with Winaa on his post now the 308 and 6.5 are down on velocity to the 7mag but when it reaches out it tends to pick up the same velocity as the other two calibers that are closer in ie 2300fps to 2800fps this puts it in a similar velocity bracket as the 308 and 6.5 then the ELD-X seems to work maybe in the 7mag we should be slowing them down in velocity to get them to work better in closer but then we defeat the purpose of having a 7mag for its knock down power for larger animals when it could be done with 308 or 6.5 even though they are two quiet capable calibers So in my thinking the 7mag could be just a caliber that relies on long distance shots to have the ELD-X work as expected or required and by saying this it doesn't mean the ELD-X is a total write off but maybe just finicky to velocity in 7mag

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Originally Posted by rigga

G'day fellas I've actually spoke about the ELD-X on this forum before and then and still I don't use them because to me they were too unpredictable . now since then I've done a lot of asking around the ridges about who used ELD-X and what they thought about them and the info was that many 308 users said that they were happy with them and rarely had any problems then I asked the 6.5 people and they almost mimicked the 308 people in having no troubles to write home about so then I got in touch with some mates pro shooters and ordinary hunters who use 7mm mag with ELD-X nearly all have had problems with them but out past 300m they had reasonably good kills even in donkeys and bulls and camel so to me this says that velocity is playing out here I tend to agree with Winaa on his post now the 308 and 6.5 are down on velocity to the 7mag but when it reaches out it tends to pick up the same velocity as the other two calibers that are closer in ie 2300fps to 2800fps this puts it in a similar velocity bracket as the 308 and 6.5 then the ELD-X seems to work maybe in the 7mag we should be slowing them down in velocity to get them to work better in closer but then we defeat the purpose of having a 7mag for its knock down power for larger animals when it could be done with 308 or 6.5 even though they are two quiet capable calibers So in my thinking the 7mag could be just a caliber that relies on long distance shots to have the ELD-X work as expected or required and by saying this it doesn't mean the ELD-X is a total write off but maybe just finicky to velocity in 7mag

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Or do as @stug does and have 2 different loads 1 projectile for close range like a soft point and the eldx for longer range stuff.
I may do this as I am developing a load for 270wsm when I get my new rifle back from Gunworks.