sealgair
Active Member
I thought I'd write a brief note about my first season using the LRX as it might be of interest to some of you guys, i've used the TTSX before, but with an estate policy change for this year to shooting 100% none lead ammo I decided to try the LRX. I am a professional deer stalker (guide) here in the Highlands of Scotland and the majority of my season is spent hunting about 30,000 acres of mountainous terrain on the West Coast.
From that area between myself and another stalker we normally try and shoot about 60 red deer stags (males) a year between mid August and the 20th of October. In a normal year all of this is guided hunting for paying clients from all over the world, however because of COVID we were restricted heavily and ended up with only domestic visitors, which is a bit of a shame. Final cull was 35 stags, quite a few of which I shot myself.
I ran LRX bullets out of all three of my rifles, a Tikka T3x in 6.5 Creedmoor (127g @ 2,765ft/sec), a semi custom Remington in .270 (129g @ 2,890ft/sec) and a Sako 75 in 7mm STW (168g @ 3,250ft/sec).
Firstly I shot say that I only shot one stag with the STW all season, it does not have a suppressor which is unusual now in Scotland, so I didn't use it when we had guests out. It was quite a 8 point (4x4) stag that weighed in at 170lb and it fell on the spot to a shoulder shot at 496 metres on a nice calm day. No surprises there.
The Creedmoor and .270 both shot the majority of animals inside 300m, and I was impressed with the terminal performance with both shoulder and rib shots at these distances. The LRX for me offers a significant advantage over the TTSX bullet in this regard, which i've found to be less than ideal for shots placed behind the shoulder, as long as you break the bone they work well enough. Compared to lead bullets which I'm used to (Nosler HBT and ELD-X being favourites) I don't see a huge difference in performance, other than on two points.
Firstly the deer will stand a lot longer with the copper bullet, I have ended up shooting a number of them again even when it turned out the first shot was finely placed and 100% lethal, this seems to be the case specifically with lung shots. Occasionally with impacts that have hit the humerus rather than the scapula the bullets will fragment into two or three pieces, these fragments seem to exit the carcass in most cased. I have recovered only two bullets all season, images of which are attached.
Secondly and certainly a bonus, is the significant reduction in meat damage I have found, even with good deep wound channels there is smaller exit holes than I am used to, which is good news as long as the animals are dying quickly. As well as the images of recovered bullets I have attached a couple of other images from the season.
I suspect from an American/Canadian point of view my rambling is most relevant to Mule and whitetail deer, elk being so much larger than a red deer even though they're genetically so similar, and I hope some of you find it interesting.
We're now starting our hind cull, which we carry out ourselves without clients, and will be around 150 adult females plus calves where needed. This will be a better test of the bullets and I might report again in February when we've finished that up.
Sam
From that area between myself and another stalker we normally try and shoot about 60 red deer stags (males) a year between mid August and the 20th of October. In a normal year all of this is guided hunting for paying clients from all over the world, however because of COVID we were restricted heavily and ended up with only domestic visitors, which is a bit of a shame. Final cull was 35 stags, quite a few of which I shot myself.
I ran LRX bullets out of all three of my rifles, a Tikka T3x in 6.5 Creedmoor (127g @ 2,765ft/sec), a semi custom Remington in .270 (129g @ 2,890ft/sec) and a Sako 75 in 7mm STW (168g @ 3,250ft/sec).
Firstly I shot say that I only shot one stag with the STW all season, it does not have a suppressor which is unusual now in Scotland, so I didn't use it when we had guests out. It was quite a 8 point (4x4) stag that weighed in at 170lb and it fell on the spot to a shoulder shot at 496 metres on a nice calm day. No surprises there.
The Creedmoor and .270 both shot the majority of animals inside 300m, and I was impressed with the terminal performance with both shoulder and rib shots at these distances. The LRX for me offers a significant advantage over the TTSX bullet in this regard, which i've found to be less than ideal for shots placed behind the shoulder, as long as you break the bone they work well enough. Compared to lead bullets which I'm used to (Nosler HBT and ELD-X being favourites) I don't see a huge difference in performance, other than on two points.
Firstly the deer will stand a lot longer with the copper bullet, I have ended up shooting a number of them again even when it turned out the first shot was finely placed and 100% lethal, this seems to be the case specifically with lung shots. Occasionally with impacts that have hit the humerus rather than the scapula the bullets will fragment into two or three pieces, these fragments seem to exit the carcass in most cased. I have recovered only two bullets all season, images of which are attached.
Secondly and certainly a bonus, is the significant reduction in meat damage I have found, even with good deep wound channels there is smaller exit holes than I am used to, which is good news as long as the animals are dying quickly. As well as the images of recovered bullets I have attached a couple of other images from the season.
I suspect from an American/Canadian point of view my rambling is most relevant to Mule and whitetail deer, elk being so much larger than a red deer even though they're genetically so similar, and I hope some of you find it interesting.
We're now starting our hind cull, which we carry out ourselves without clients, and will be around 150 adult females plus calves where needed. This will be a better test of the bullets and I might report again in February when we've finished that up.
Sam
