Thread: Match vs hunting bullets

Originally Posted by GWH

The Amax was a match bullet and the 162gr Amax has killed a lot of deer in NZ.

Not strictly true.

The A-Max was always presented by Hornady as a dual purpose match / hunting bullet, until they came up with the cunning plan of making two bullets in place of one.

Hornady classified it as such in their reloading manuals as follows:

.224 cal: target & varmint
6mm: target, varmint & medium game
6.5mm / 120gr: target & varmint
6.5mm / 140gr: target, varmint & medium game

Everything wider/heavier than this was also target, varmint & medium game.

This is the classification in the 8th edition of the reloading manual. I can’t be sure but it was either in the 9th or the 10th edition that they changed it to target only, with the advent of the ELD-M and ELD-X, as Hornady ran down their stocks of A-Max. You see the cunning buggers wanted you to have one bullet for targets and another bullet for the game, when mysteriously just a few months prior one bullet would do pretty much everything!

The view that the A-Max was / is only a match bullet is prevalent the worlds over for some reason but as we in New Zealand know full well it is an outstanding medium game bullet our typical ranges. So is the ELD-M which is just an A-MAX with a longer ogive. In 6.5mm and .308 I’ve had them punch straight through both shoulders of mature red hinds at 300m+ nae bother. Sometimes you’ll get one that doesn’t exit, tends to be the closer ones. It’s a very effective bang flop bullet.