The thread Steve attached above showed lots of folks praising the ELD-X and ELD-M offerings. I will be looking into those.
Thanks for everyone’s input. Good to know I should have a really effective hunting rifle on my hands. I wanted to try something new, but it was an uncomfortable thought for me to go after a cartridge with a little less KE than the ‘06. Sounds like I made a fine decision based on everyone’s experience here. Can’t wait to try it out.
You have a great cartridge.
Don’t look at KE alone, because the KE of a solid copper bullet transfers less energy and does less tissue damage than a bonded mushrooming bullet, and significantly less than a highly fragmenting bullet like the SST, ELDm, TMK, Berger.
Search for a thread “.223 for bear, moose, elk” or something like that and look at the thousands of pictures of wound cavities. Then, tell me if you would rather get shot through the shoulder with a cooper bullet that expands little and passes through or with a highly fragmenting bullet.
Summary, bullet construction matters more than KE or bullet diameter/weight.
There are plenty of videos out there showing elk, moose, deer, caribou, and other critters being shot with 6mm and 22 Creedmoor highly fragmenting bullets as well.
There is also a thread on “match bullets” and why they are effective. You can read both sides of the argument but note which side talks about effectively killing vs much of the old myths. Silly myths, especially about “tough rutted up elk shoulders” that are like armor. Hint, they are not— shoulder blades are super thin and living bone is not as hard as the dried bones we see laying around that dry out. A bone is not stopping a rifle bullet. If anything, it usually creates even more shrapnel and damage with bone chunks flying too.
Hit an animal in the vitals, and all that tissue damage results in the fastest blood loss possible and the quickest death —other than a central nervous system shot that is an off switch.
We live in a golden age of manufacturing and technology to see huge sample sizes rather than relying on dudes in deer camp or the gun writers who regurgitate old myths and get paid for promoting stuff.
