08-18-2023, 05:36 PM
Fess Wrote:As far as the 6.8 SPC, several elk have been taken, most commonly with with Accubond 100 and 110's and with Cavity Back monolithic bullets. Still, it limits you to near-perfect shots at relatively short range. Interestingly, both 105gr Cavity Back and the heavier 120 grain version have worked well.
I think that most people would recommend something more powerful unless you intentionally want to limit yourself to the above-mentioned short-range and perfect shots.
For a big animal, I would prefer a bullet designed for deep penetration, like the AccuBonds. I suspect that the 105 and 118gr 6.5 Cavity Back bullets would work well in the Grendel.
They are advertised to expand down to 1500 fps.
The Grendel and ELD-M is an interesting case. Hornady itself does not recommend it for hunting, but, unlike some match bullets, it seems to mushroom like a hunting bullet, at least from photos I have seen. This probably has something to do with the Grendel's moderate velocity and the polymer tip not terribly different from the SST. The ELD-M does not have a tapered jacket like most hunting bullets, but at Grendel speeds, it seems to work OK.
Hornady had a YouTube video a few months back about bullet performance and why they typically don't recommend target bullets for hunting, FWIW.
you bet, I collect as much data as I can on my own and there's a great example from this forum where a guy recovered an eldm offside of a nice whitetail buck with a 1700 fps impact, textbook mushroom and looks to be around 95% weight retention, I have recovered 81% of an eld-m from a steep quartering away buck at 2100 fps impact and it went 18" taking last rib on way in and going through brisket and hanging up in the last bit of meat in front of it on the way out, and I've recovered some jackets from my faster grenades on big buck and bear with 2250-2350 fps impacts under offside hide and judging by how much further jacket peeled back I'd have to guess retention in the 50-60% range for the really close shots, there was a guy who tested eldm/sst in gel and the eldm went 1" further, they are both going to perform similar on game and I think most who've tried both would agree
I also shot a whitetail at 420 yards quartering and it exited after 15" of penetration and I know that bullet was likely closer to the textbook mushroom in the 90% weight retention range based on my 2100 fps 81% and buddy's 1700 fps ~95% retention example here, and nothing I've shot yet, including a bull moose at 125 yards, has shown me that I would get anything outside of 18-22" penetration from muzzle to as far as I can hit things, not sure why use a mono, obviously large bone will be different but as things slow down the bullet weight stays higher therefore sd higher therefore penetration depth goes up...the point of mono's is to keep all the sad sd they have to start with and drive them really hard to compensate and make them open up and do decent internal work also. But the slow squishy bullet formula is way more efficient...which is what the grendel with sst/eldm 123's is. It's 3/4 scale 308 168 Bt's essentially, same depths, same internal damage, just a few less grains of bullet but 50% less recoil.
I would prefer my eldm in all situations including elk/moose with the grendel. It has all the right numbers and performance characteristics. The copper equivalent to me requires the step up to 6 CM to compensate. Or use reloading on the grendel to push the pressures in a bolt action and compensate with extra velocity that way. Factory ammo though...6.5 CM, or in this guys case 7-08 or 308 if factory, the spc isn't an option regardless of reloading imo...it's maybe a 200 yard at best with ideal ideal placement regardless what you load into it.