Thread: Just the tip......7 rem mag A-Tip load development

Originally Posted by sneeze

The obvious reply to this is the historic "7mm 162gr Amax", of which I thankfully still have 600.

This remains one of the classic misconceptions…

That projectile wasn’t categorised as a match bullet by Hornady for many years. It was categorised in the reloading manuals as a target-match, varmint and medium game bullet.

It was only upon the publication of the 10th edition of the reloading manual in 2016 that Hornady fiddled with the categorisation having introduced the ELD-X and ELD-M in a rather cynical move to convince shooters that they needed two bullets in the place of one… Mysteriously, the 162gr A-Max suddenly became “only” a target bullet which was a bit daft because it was also listed as discontinued. Interesting how they chose to erase so many years of A-Max history like that!

In my view the A-Tip is 100% oriented towards match shooting and its construction is highly suspect for a hunting bullet. The apparent lack of a cavity would make me steer well clear. However… and there’s always a however… when it was first introduced there was a flurry of long-range hunting videos and one in particular stuck in my mind and that was long-range pronghorn hunting:



Personally I want to see a much more apparent shock to the animal, especially if hit on the shoulder like that. That pronghorn took off like greased lightning which isn’t a problem in that environment but in our environment it would quite likely be lost without a tracking dog.