Late 2023 Elk Bullet Updates?

[Stinky Coyote]

Quality trigger time on relevant target sizes, with an experienced mentor to guide you through stalking, are more important than the type of bullet, but the bullet should still be optimum.

6.5 Grendel allows you to get tons of trigger time without any recoil penalties, while being able to spot for yourself and immediately acquire positive-loop feedback, unlike larger cartridges, especially magnums.

That 14yr-old youth hunter in the above video was taken through repeated training at 500yds on smaller steel targets with a 24” 6.5 Grendel, then guided by someone with over 100 successful elk hunts.

She made a great 1st-round shot into the vitals at 390yds, having settled into a solid field position that was familiar enough for her to be confident in it based on her training.

I’ve seen dudes who maybe scratched into a few cartridges of their 20rd box of magnum ammunition for a rough zero, then blast away 6-8 rounds on opening day in elk season, with a wounded animal running off, never to be seen again.

Those same guys will tell this successful hunter that 6.5 Grendel isn’t ethical for killing elk, they’re too tough, etc.

I would have agreed with them before I saw all the people who have filled their tags with Grendel, understanding their limits.

A big thing people overlook is running the ballistics up at elk altitudes, where we see them at 8,000 - 11,000ft in season. That increases the expansion threshold and ft-lbs performance of 6.5 Grendel a bit, but not into long range territory where magnums are appropriate.


In this video, he blames the bullet type for a hunting error where the animal is getting ready to move, which affected his shot placement, putting it into the hind quarters.

ELD-M works fine for killing, and any other type of bullet would have produced the same results with bad placement due to animal movement during the time of flight.
[video=youtube_share;8yCddWv62Ig]https://youtu.be/8yCddWv62Ig[/video]

my response to that guys video...

"-eld-m been my go to for 15 head of Alberta big game over 5 seasons, 6 species wolf to moose, 10-420 yards, 163 yard average shot distance, 13 yard average recovery distance, walked up to everything after shooting, run them at moderate velocities and they are magic so long as you're matching sd for game intended, I get shorter recoveries and more drt's than I did with bigger/faster cartridges running accubonds, if anything was going to save you on that muley hit it would have been the eld-m doing more work in shorter span, nothing short of a bazooka can save the day on a bad hit, and...

-for your long range stuff you bet speed up your shot sequence, lrh is defined as 0-600 or more accurately end of mpbr to 600, the laws governing this is tof, field conditions accuracy, and live animal factor, moderate amount of people end up consistent killers to 450, very few to 600 and anything beyond that is a tiny percentage called elrh and not worth the time to be a consistent killer out there as your way past diminishing returns in terms of prep/practice/gear etc. once you go past 0.5 seconds tof (~450-500 yards) and 0.75 seconds tof (~600), it's no different in the bowhunters world, run your tof's on 50-70 yard arrows...same thing, the odd archery guy can kill up to 100 yards but they tend to spend the year with the bow in hand, same limits apply to bowhunters as gun hunters, field accuracy drops, and most people regardless how far they practice to or compete will still stay 600 or less on game gun and 70 or less bow and maybe unable to verbalize exactly why...I'm doing that right here and now, most can't read wind better than 20" max to get on edge of kill zones and know you'll land within the balloons, that could be 10 mph at 600 or 30 at 400, field accuracy due to many obvious reasons will not be nearly the same as bench accuracy...call it 1.5 to 2 moa and again start pushing the edge of kill zone size flexibility with the wind and tof factors, and ability for animals to move....these laws keep this lrh defined to ~600 for 2400-3100 fps modern projectiles game

-keep on learning and doing, I went up and down ladder, now happy to keep big game to ~400 even though I practice to much further and only go beyond that if 'need' to like you did here with that muley doe follow up, no limits for coyotes though, the more you see this 40,000' view the less you'll keep trying to push past these distances here as the odds exponentially start moving away from your favour from 0.5 sec tof onward and there's lots of other things to do in the outdoors than live with a gun in your hand "

[MachV]

Just did an autopsy on an antelope that was hit at 300 yards in the shoulder. A finishing shot was needed as the bullet didnt penetrate the shoulder but did totally @#$% it up. Now that same bullet has dropped 6 other antelope in their tracks from 125-453 yards as long as it goes in the chest cavity.
I personaly would not purposely use the Grendel for elk but if my elk tag would have been valid while hunting antelope a couple days ago a nice bull would received a double tap to the lungs ????