WARNING! ABOUT HORNADY ELD-X BULLETS

[Coldfinger]

After my crazy day at the range last Wednesday I called guy who shoots a lot of LR shooting competitions.

During our discussion of my shooting the conversation turned to bullets for a little while. Because of the added cost and lack of consistency of premium bullets he went old school and now only uses Sierra Match Kings.

The only thing I have ever seen with Premium bullets is a Premium cost! Just can't go wrong with Sierra! (Unless you call them when you only get 46 bullets in a 50 count box)

 

[LAGS1573]

I have been shooting these ELD-X bullets for hunting for a couple of years...no major issues, and very consistent/accurate. Several years ago I bought some Sierra bullets that varied by about .020" from the last box or two. I called Sierra and I got the same response as the OP...there are variations between lots and even within the same lot; however, it doesn't affect accuracy. I simply measure Ogive length of each lot of bullets and adjust accordingly.

 

[Short Round]

The only thing I have ever seen with Premium bullets is a Premium cost! Just can't go wrong with Sierra! (Unless you call them when you only get 46 bullets in a 50 count box)

That would irk me ever time I saw the empty holes in my MTM box. Even knowing I killed a 10 point and lost that missing piece of brass it rankles my sense of order. Reloaders can be an odd bunch!


Hornady did that to me with a 500 count box of FMJs. 498 bullets and a slim lead core that never got a jacket. Midway or Wideners shorted me a .300 win mag case. I had a short go round with their CSR. Oh we sell those by weight. No, I corrected her, you sell those by the count, but you mis pack them by weight. I did not get my missing piece of brass not that it would match right anyhow.

 

[Cnkhunting]

I'll start by saying, I've been reading posts for a long time on here and always get great information from everyone here on the forum. It's time I share, what I consider crucial information on the eld-x bullet.There has been a few threads on here about the inconsistency between lots of bullets in their base to ogive lengths and weight variances. And WOW! They weren't exaggerating! I've been loading 200 gr. Eld-x for my 300 win mag. I bought the very first box I could get my hands on when they first hit the shelves a couple yrs ago. Some of you may have noticed the first run of these bullets had a red translucent tip. I started as you should by establishing my Max length to rifling using an overall length gauge and comparator. It took me a while to get a load worked up but eventually found a combo that worked.H-1000 78.5 gr. .018 off the lands.5/8 " 5 shot group a big ragged hole basically. By now I'm nearly out of bullets and have search around to find another box. Breaking into the new box ,and just continued on loading with my recipe, suddenly accuracy goes away. Well a couple of tight bolts ,loose primer pockets and a case separation later, I shot through the Chrono and my velocities were a higher and sparatic, I dropped my charge down 1.5 gr and it came back in pretty good but not like it was shooting. Now I was thinking maybe weather , temp.pressure , different lot of powder?something changed. Well you guessed it! I thought I had better recheck my distance to lands again just for kicks. Come to find out , this lot of bullets ended up being longer by .023 tho. So I was jamming my bullets .005 in the lands. That's a problem! Since then I have bought a couple more boxes and they are all different, I know I should be buying several boxes of the same lots, but finding more than box or 2 is still difficult. I called hornady, and Tim there told me that all bullet manufacturers have this much variances in their bullets ,and all theirs all meet specs.Well I told Him "BS! I've never seen any bullets this far out."He was no help, was not nice about anything he said, and basically said it's my problem and my job to measure every individual bullet.Then tells me that if I want to be that picky, I should use the eld-match, that they have much better tolerances.So I asked him how well those work on elk. Lol.The conversation ended there by me hanging up. Now as far as the eld-x being a good bullet, I believe it is. It performs as advertised, but the quality control and customer service is BS. Their sales are still sky high from all the hype and commercials about Doppler radar and magic tips that don't melt, so no need to give 2 ***** about it now! I'm going to give you guys some actual solid numbers to look at here, and you can decide if this acceptable. I'm sensing my gun might smell bergers for lunch!
Measurements are with calipers and Hornady comparator
First batch of bullets translucent tip:
To the lands 3.900 length of bullet 1.866
Lot 2161170 dtl3.877 1.866
Lot 2170162 dtl3.882 1.869
Lot 2170254 dtl3.900. 1.851
Lot 2170148 dtl3.908 . 1.853
Thanks all for reading my rant ,and pass this information on as it could potentially be a dangerous situation.

What was the comment made about shooting the ELD M bullet for elk? I'm going to shoot them at elk out of my 7mag. I'm curious what was said.