How come so much love for ELDMs and not as much love for Berger’s ?

[Jordan Smith]

This was a pressure test across 5 grains of powder and about a 150fps span.

180 ELDM on the left & 180 Berger Hybrid on the right. They’d both kill, but damn those hybrids always shoot like a MF

View attachment 891994

Man, those results are so close that I'd likely have to repeat that test several times to draw any meaningful conclusions.

 

[Diced]

I've found the eldm to just be too soft. I'm tired of splattering lead into the front quarters of animals. The grind from a bull this past year killed with 2 147 eldm has
bullet fragments in it and neither shot went through a shoulder.

Bergers with the target jacket or the very heavy for caliber EOL bullets have been most consistent for me.

 

[doc holiday13]

Berger hunting bullets have the thinner jacket. I only use the VLDh in my 7mm and the 133 EH in my 25.

When a bullet is just a little “tougher” you will get more variation than “softer” bullets like the TMK, ELDm and ELDx. I have been impressed with the factory ELDx hunting ammo in many friends rifles and recommend it.

Lots of the complaints for Berger I see are when people use the target hybrids, cause they just shoot amazing. It can depend upon caliber it seems whether people like the target bullets.

I have thoughts all over the place on bullets.. I started using SMK's ~2007 and got lots of hate. Super effective on deer but super explosive. Then I went to mono solids.

I'm currently on ELDx because its less explosive, but I should have some better data on them in about a month after I do a deer herd cull. I haven't shot enough animals with ELDM to have a solid opinion. I just know that at 100 yards they pencil in and leave a golfball hole when coming out of a PRC.

Would you compare the performance of a berger VLD target with the ELDx and the VLD hunting with ELDm or SMK? I've not shot an animal with a TMK but if its more explosive than a SMK I don't think I'd shoot it

 

[huntnful]

Man, those results are so close that I'd likely have to repeat that test several times to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Definitely plenty similar, that both would likely produce an excellent load and group once a charge weight was settled on. Could easily pick either one. I’ve shot them enough side by side to know that Berger’s will outshoot the ELDM pretty consistently. They are just more consistent from bullet to bullet.

 

[Jordan Smith]

I've found the eldm to just be too soft. I'm tired of splattering lead into the front quarters of animals. The grind from a bull this past year killed with 2 147 eldm has
bullet fragments in it and neither shot went through a shoulder.

Bergers with the target jacket or the very heavy for caliber EOL bullets have been most consistent for me.

Interesting. I've found the opposite. The 147 ELDM impacting at <2600 fps has fragmented relatively little for my group on a bunch of critters. Moderate expansion and 1.5" exits are the norm, with very few fragments found in the meat. Berger bullets have generally fragmented more, IME, but my sample size is smaller with Bergers.

 

[Jordan Smith]

Would you compare the performance of a berger VLD target with the ELDx and the VLD hunting with ELDm...?

My experience with ELDs is almost entirely with the ELDM and not the -X, but I would say that it's the opposite, with the Berger VLD Target being somewhat comparable in results to the ELDM. The VLD Hunting performs more like how people seem to describe the ELDX, IMO.

 

[doc holiday13]

My experience with ELDs is almost entirely with the ELDM and not the -X, but I would say that it's the opposite, with the Berger VLD Target being somewhat comparable in results to the ELDM. The VLD Hunting performs more like how people seem to describe the ELDX, IMO.

ELDX is designed to not completely fragment. It has a thicker jacket towards the tail end of the bullet and there is a a mechanical lock built into the jacket that holds on to the base section of lead and the front end of the bullet will frag. The EldM does not have that lock. Hence the very close weights between the eldM and X. Based on my own experience of one animal, the ELDM will completely frag but not explosively.

Based on my experience with SMK's, unless the jacket design has changed since I used them 15 years ago, they are probably the most explosive bullet you can buy. I shot a lot of deer with it. I've seen bits of the jacket stuck to the outside of the entrance wound and found lead very far away from what would be perceived as teh wound channel.

Based on talkign with a friend of mine who's shot A LOT of deer with the VLD target, it sounds like its performance would be similar to the eldX. Hence why compared the VLD hunting with the eldM

 

[Harvey_NW]

With the factory Hornady 143’s my ES is pretty consistently 60-70 FPS and SD 16-20 FPS. Is that normal/acceptable?

Talking to a more experienced buddy I get the impression that’s outside the acceptable range for factory ammo.

When I get the 6cm barrel I might have to try some of those Berger 108’s

I'm late to this one but IME, while I don't trust the precision of my cheaper optical chrono to be doppler accurate for individual shots, I've also never had to adjust velocity more than 10fps when truing up a solver starting with chrono data. It's not uncommon for me to see those spreads and SD's with data sets that are 10+, I honestly quit worrying about it and haven't observed any issues at distances out to 1k.

My buddies daughter wrecked a few animals with 105 VLD's out of my old 6 Creed, including her first bull. I'll be testing those and 108-M's in my new one arriving soon.

 

[Jordan Smith]

ELDX is designed to not completely fragment. It has a thicker jacket towards the tail end of the bullet and there is a a mechanical lock built into the jacket that holds on to the base section of lead and the front end of the bullet will frag. The EldM does not have that lock. Hence the very close weights between the eldM and X. Based on my own experience of one animal, the ELDM will completely frag but not explosively.

Sort of.

The Interlock ring’s effectiveness is debatable. The old Interlock used to have the ring fairly close to the base of the bullet, so unless the bullet expanded right to the base, it was quite effective at preventing core/jacket separation. But in more recent years the ring is placed further forward, so even with reasonable expansion, the ring tears apart as the jacket peels back.

Yes, the ELDX has a thicker jacket. What seems to be more important in how the ELDX and ELDM perform terminally, is the size of their tips and the HP behind their tips. The ELDX has a larger tip/HP than does the ELDM, apparently causing much more aggressive bullet upset and initial expansion. The relatively small tip/HP of the ELDM means that it tends to initiate expansion in a more controlled and moderate way.

Ultimately, how they both perform terminally very much depends on impact speed, but after killing dozens of animals with various ELDM bullets, our group has seen fairly uniformly moderate expansion and deep penetration. Some occasional fragmentation hasn’t seemed to affect those outcomes. The performance has been very similar to the VLD Target, IME.

 

[Cactus kid]

Ive killed plenty of critters with bergers. Also, been a part of quite a few of other's kills. I have experienced a couple bergers, penciling thru and not expanding at all. It's been very rare, but it has happened to us. We found a bullet one year in the offside hide that was still fully intact. This was more than 10 years ago and I dont recall all the specifics of yardage or impact velocity. Apart from those rare instances, the amount of internal damage on most of the kills was nothing short of fantastic.

I still shoot them in quite a few of my guns and love their accuracy. This year I plan on letting my 6.5 BB eat with the 130 vldh.

do you think the bullet you found intact on the offside hide could have tumbled on entry? I had this happen to me onetime with the 156 eol.

Bergers have killed very well for me. Sample size of about 20 animals or so. Even the one time the bullet tumbled instead of upset the animal only went 20 yards. That said, i like how the ELDMs upset better.

 

[HNTR918]

Berger's VLD Hunting bullets crush elk!

 

[199p]

I've found the eldm to just be too soft. I'm tired of splattering lead into the front quarters of animals. The grind from a bull this past year killed with 2 147 eldm has
bullet fragments in it and neither shot went through a shoulder.

Bergers with the target jacket or the very heavy for caliber EOL bullets have been most consistent for me.

What was the impact speed man? mates running them in my old 6.5prc and they have had amazing performance below 2800fps on red deer and fellow

 

[Diced]

What was the impact speed man? mates running them in my old 6.5prc and they have had amazing performance below 2800fps on red deer and fellow

Should've been around 2600 fps both right behind shoulder. Both wounds were very wide but very shallow.

We have had really good results with them on deer at slower speeds. I just like how bergers shoot and they've been more consistent(for me) on game, especially elk.

 

[HuntHarder]

do you think the bullet you found intact on the offside hide could have tumbled on entry? I had this happen to me onetime with the 156 eol.

Bergers have killed very well for me. Sample size of about 20 animals or so. Even the one time the bullet tumbled instead of upset the animal only went 20 yards. That said, i like how the ELDMs upset better.

It was a 2nd shot, after the first shot hit lungs. The bull was standing dead, just didn't know it, so I had my buddy put another in him. The bullets were not very far apart on entry, so from what I recall, it would have been difficult to tell if it tumbled. Mind you, this was quote a while ago. I am a berger fan, but like every bullet/ situation, I believe strange things can happen.