Hornady Eld-x 300 Win Mag 200 Grain Review
Going Long Range With Hornady's Versatile ELD-X
Cheers to modern engineering science, long-range shots tin be made with ease past choosing the right ammunition
October 01, 2018
When the massive bull moose moved ponderously from the scrub pines and into view, he was 611 yards away. Daylight was fading fast, and it was the last of a 10-day hunt.
A nearby rock offered an ideal rest, and there wasn't a breath of current of air. As I focused our spotting scope on the bull, Neal Emery dialed the turret on his Leupold VX-6HD scope, nestled in, and squeezed the trigger, sending a 175-grain 7mm Hornady ELD-X across a third of a mile and precisely into the bull's vitals.
Heavy hide, dumbo shoulder muscle, and rib bone crushed the bullet's nose into a archetype mushroom shape, expanding it to almost double its original bore before the bullet's strongly tapered copper jacket halted expansion. Lungs offered less resistance, and the bullet — still traveling more than than 2,300 fps — blew a fist-sized hole cleanly through the thoracic cavity.
Rippling waves created by hydraulic shock compressed, fractured, and securely hemorrhaged the lungs around it. More than rib bone and heavy musculus shredded atomic number 82 from the mushroomed ELD-Ten as information technology passed through the far shoulder, reducing its remaining weight to 116.7 grains — almost 67 percent of its original mass. Job accomplished, the bullet came to rest confronting the hide.
ELD-Ten Mission
Building a hunting bullet that consistently shoots tiny groups, slices through the air with a minimum of velocity-robbing friction, and expands dramatically on affect at extreme range nevertheless holds together adequately during close-range high-speed affect is very, very difficult.
Why? Because several of these desirable characteristics tend to abolish each other out. Engineering them all into a unmarried projectile is the holy grail of hunting-bullet pattern.
Of all those available on the market today, Hornady's ELD-X (Extremely Low Drag Expanding) bullet comes closest to achieving perfection.
At first glance, the ELD-X appears to simply exist a stretched-out, streamlined version of a typical boat-tailed, polymer-tipped deer bullet such as Nosler'due south Ballistic Tip or Hornady's own SST. But in that location's a lot more than to it than that.
ELD-10 Accurateness & Aerodynamics
For starters, the ELD-X is held to a shocking level of accuracy. Being intended for employ at extended ranges, information technology has to be. Its QC standard is one-half-MOA x-shot groups at 200 yards — equal to that of nigh match bullets.
As an interesting aside, Hornady'southward original plan was to bail the ELD-X's lead core to its jacket in lodge to provide ultimate integrity, but the bonding procedure introduced too many accuracy-affecting variables. Unwilling to compromise accuracy, Hornady chose to re-engineer the bullet with other integrity-supporting elements and forego the bonding process.
In a long-range bullet, extremely good aerodynamics are simply as important every bit accurateness. However, massaging a bullet's contour to catamenia through air molecules with minimum resistance is dissimilar from finessing it to take rifling with extreme consistency, and combining the 2 elements can be tricky. Not to worry: ELD-X bullets offering best-in-class ballistic coefficients (BC), which is a measure of a projectile's power to shrug off air friction and hold on to velocity, and shoot very accurately out of most eighty percent of the rifles I've handloaded them for.
Now nosotros come to the really difficult design elements. Namely, creating a bullet that expands reliably at the low-affect velocities of long range nonetheless won't tear to shreds at the high velocities of close-range impacts.
To accomplish the first consequence, Hornady's engineers incorporated a mechanical expansion-initiating device in the relationship betwixt the composite tip and the jacket mouth. It's a bit of a trade secret so I can't provide specifics, merely I can country this: It works. On bear upon, the composite tip drives rearward, edges sheer off and the bulk of the tip acts as a wedge to initiate massive, dramatic expansion.
As an of import aside, the tip itself is made of a high-tech material Hornady calls Oestrus Shield. It's non the standard Delrin polymer used for almost tipped bullets. All-encompassing testing and assay via Doppler Radar indicated to Hornady's engineers that when fit to a high-BC bullet and fired at velocities approaching 3,000 fps and college, Delrin erodes slightly during flying, resulting in a blunter tip shape. Erosion is minuscule, but it's plenty to adversely affect aerodynamics and consistency. To overcome the issue, Hornady researched and employed a rut-resistant fabric for ELD-X tips.
However, Heat Shield material has one disadvantage when compared to Delrin polymer. Air friction during flight causes Delrin to heat and take on a rubber-similar consistency, which acts hydraulically on impact and initiates expansion reliably and consistently. Heat Shield material doesn't do this, and as a issue expansion consistency suffered until Hornady's R&D wizards engineered the afore-mentioned expansion-initiating mechanical interaction between tip and jacket.
ELD-X Bear on Characteristics
Bullets with very thin jackets take rifling more consistently than thick-jacketed bullets, which is why every traditional lucifer bullet available has a sparse jacket. However, sparse jackets have most no integrity on touch. They only fragment and let the soft lead core independent within to get torn to shreds. Being a hunting bullet, the ELD-Ten had to have a jacket thick enough to slow expansion and retain shape and penetrating weight.
This proved to exist such a challenge that the ELD-X's launch appointment was shifted back a total year. Technicians took prototypes to Africa and shot over eighty plains game animals at ranges from very close to almost 1,000 yards, so returned home and continued finessing jacket thickness and taper. New tooling and machines finally resulted in a strong tapered jacket consequent enough to run into enervating accurateness standards. Thin at the front, it curls back into the platonic mushroom shape at unprecedented low speeds. Thick at the rear, information technology hangs together to retain plenty weight for adequate penetration upwards to quite-fast impact speeds.
When the bullet finally came to market, it offered an extremely broad velocity/expansion window, conservatively from 1,600 fps to 3,000 fps.
At speeds slower than that, the ELD-10 may not expand. Higher impact velocities—such as firing a handloaded 178-grain ELD-X at iii,300 fps from your .300 Ultra Mag into the ribs of a bull elk in thick timber — can result in a shredded bullet, although fast, dramatic kills still ordinarily effect.
Field reports and my ain observations have shown that at long range the ELD-10 typically mushrooms perfectly. At close-range sub-3,000 fps impacts, information technology tends to mushroom violently, impale extremely effectively, and penetrate to the off-side hide, where the jacket and core are oftentimes discovered separated but only an inch or ii autonomously. My theory is that they stay together until they see the trampoline-like bear upon of the hide, and separate during the rebound.
ELD-X Practical Application
Hornady's ELD-X bullet has rapidly gained a well-deserved reputation as arguably the unmarried well-nigh versatile large-game projectile available today. For non-dangerous game to distances exceeding a half-mile, it performs splendidly.
When should y'all not choose an ELD-X? Don't apply it for dangerous game. Don't intentionally pick it for shut-range hunting with fast magnum cartridges. And don't employ it on big, heavy-boned animals out of a cartridge's traditional weight class (i.e. don't pick an ELD-10 in your .243 Winchester and try to impale a bison with it.)
Hornady is continually adding bullet weights and diameters to the ELD-X line. Currently they range from a 103-grain .243 version up to a 270-grain .338 version, and all perform beautifully.
3 stand out in my experience. For the uber-popular half dozen.5 Creedmoor, there is no amend all-around bullet for deer-size game and the occasional elk than the 143-grain ELD-X. In 7mm Magnums, the 175-grain ELD-X is shockingly authentic and effective to startling distances. And a 200-grain ELD-Ten from your .300 Win. Mag. wallops bull elk in spectacular style.
Conclusion
Until recently, BC, farthermost accuracy, and broad-velocity-spectrum touch on performance was not critical to hunters because nobody could place shots consistently enough past 400 or perhaps 500 yards to brand shooting game way out at that place upstanding. Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation rangefinders, super-authentic hunting-weight rifles, and feature-rich, consequent riflescopes changed that mural entirely and created a need for hunting bullets of an entirely different breed — hunting bullets that become the task washed effectively and reliably from the muzzle to ane,000 yards.
There are a number of excellent bullets on today's marketplace, merely for this particular niche, Hornady's ELD-X edges every 1 of them out.
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Source: https://www.petersenshunting.com/editorial/going-long-range-with-hornadys-versatile-eld-x/307680
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