Morrey
Member
I finally found two boxes of ELD-X hunting bullets by Hornady to try out. This bullet professes to give match bullet accuracy with hunting bullet performance, so to me, this is the best of both worlds.
My bullet selection was a 178 grain .308. My rifle is a Cooper Jackson Game .30-06, and for those who know this gun, Cooper offers a .5 MOA accuracy guarantee with carefully selected hand loads. When using Sierra Matchking 168 gr bullets and IMR 4064, I am under .5 MOA. The gun is 24" barrel, 1:10 twist. But this is my hunting rifle, so I need a hunting bullet, not a match style bullet.
I did a few low to high load workups with the 178gr ELD-X hunting bullet, and immediately saw that 56 gr of IMR 4350 was tight grouping. I have no solid Hornady reloading data for this bullet since it is brand new on the market, so I used data for a Sierra 180 gr spitzer boat tail. The load data publishes the velocity to be 2800 fps so this is excellent for my hunting purposes. I will chrony the bullet this weekend to confirm published is close to actual.
The beauty of this bullet is that I have shot three separate 3 round groups ALL under .5 MOA. The smallest 3 round group measures out at .325 MOA, and these bullets are the best grouping I have shot in my Cooper to date. They perform slightly better, in fact, than match specific bullets I have used.
I have not tested this bullet on live game, but that will come soon enough. Hornady's ballistic tests show awesome expansion at a variety of ranges and velocities, so my money is on this bullet as a big winner!!!
My bullet selection was a 178 grain .308. My rifle is a Cooper Jackson Game .30-06, and for those who know this gun, Cooper offers a .5 MOA accuracy guarantee with carefully selected hand loads. When using Sierra Matchking 168 gr bullets and IMR 4064, I am under .5 MOA. The gun is 24" barrel, 1:10 twist. But this is my hunting rifle, so I need a hunting bullet, not a match style bullet.
I did a few low to high load workups with the 178gr ELD-X hunting bullet, and immediately saw that 56 gr of IMR 4350 was tight grouping. I have no solid Hornady reloading data for this bullet since it is brand new on the market, so I used data for a Sierra 180 gr spitzer boat tail. The load data publishes the velocity to be 2800 fps so this is excellent for my hunting purposes. I will chrony the bullet this weekend to confirm published is close to actual.
The beauty of this bullet is that I have shot three separate 3 round groups ALL under .5 MOA. The smallest 3 round group measures out at .325 MOA, and these bullets are the best grouping I have shot in my Cooper to date. They perform slightly better, in fact, than match specific bullets I have used.
I have not tested this bullet on live game, but that will come soon enough. Hornady's ballistic tests show awesome expansion at a variety of ranges and velocities, so my money is on this bullet as a big winner!!!
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