Not my idea of exemplary hunting bullet performance, especially the first pics, but dead animals are dead animals I guess.

How could it not be?

Hit a rib, carried on, made a perfect sized exit, through a shoulder.

Curious what it all looks like when you shoot one at 50 yards and hit the shoulder?

At 2640 mv and 250 yards its going what 2200 or so feet per second, pretty low on the spectrum of what will yield reliable expansion.

Looks pretty spot on performance to me too. I don't think you could ask for much more in how those panned out.

2307 fps, and 1914 ft/lbs.

Exactly!

A near tennis ball sized entry, by hitting a rib bone? and an even bigger exit hole at those speeds aren't my idea of performance. I can only imagine,as mentioned, what it would look like at a 100 yds or less. Nothing personal.

Here's a pronghorn I shot with a 7mag and 160 partitions at 150 yds. This is the exit hole after going through off shoulder and out behind the shoulder in the pic. A quarter sized exit means no explosion upon bone impact to my feeble brain.

My son used this 140 ELDM on a really nice mule deer buck a month ago. Here is exit, right behind both shoulder entry and exit, at 220 yds.

What sized tennis balls are you using? That's a 1" hole in, and a 1 1/2"+ hole out.

I don't have Sasquatch hands, use that for a reference.

Compare the quarter sized holes in my pics with yours, that's what I was doing. Glad you happy with them though.

For the most part I steer away from cup and core because of what they do the minority of the time, not the majority. If you can be very careful of shot placement its even smaller. That and using a 162 grainer at 2600 fps puts a lot in their court. Different animal than a 100 grain 6mm at 2800-3000 fps or even a 130-140 grain 7mm at 2800-2900 fps. Higher velocity has made a lot of bullets come unglued.

I just don't know what they're going to do if they are screaming fast, and hit an animal. Will they shrapnel and not make it through? Only one way to find out. That's what hogs are for. But to your point, Hornady is selling them as working when they slow down. That doesn't mean they're not going to work, going fast though.

https://www.hornady.com/bullets/eld-x#!/

Don't know why the link isn't working, have to copy and paste apparently.

My M.O. is still heavy for caliber bullets, that shoot consistent. I like weight and BC more than blistering fast MV. Different strokes for different folks is all.

I killed a couple does with the 7mm 175 grain. Muzzle velocity was 3200 FPS. Impacts were around 50 yards. There was significant damage, as expected, but I was pleased with how well they held up and exited. I’m confident in them, now.

I have pictures of one, if interested, but no way to post them.

175 gr ELD-X?

Yes.

I head-shot both a doe and a spike this weekend with 143gr 6.5 CM, Hornady Precision Hunter loads at 82 and 85 yds, respectively. I was actually a little surprised by the small size of the exits. I don't have pictures but the bullets apparently held together very well. I expected the far side of the heads to be missing but neither exit was over 1.5", and that's after going through quite a bit of bone.

So, same expansion as what I had.

Pretty much, yeah. One small piece did fragment off and not exit, but the majority held together and did. Considering how hard I pushed them, I was more than pleased. I’ll probably back them off some, but I wanted to run them as fast as I safely could to test them.

Well, with a new bullet, we won't know how it's going to act unless we test. Thanks for testing and sharing!

That was my thinking. I like to cull does with new bullets. Probably won’t be doing any testing for awhile after this.

I saw some hogs in your country a couple of weeks ago.
Just sayin.

I need to find a local place to hunt. They’ve moved in thick, lately.

I might can help with that. At least for the hogs anyway.

Hogs are plenty. Do tell.

It's hard to compare exit holes when one animal is skinned the the other isn't. Animal hide stretches so exits tend to be small in the hide unless bone is hit on the way out. I've had mostly small exits but DRTs. When you skin them, you can see much bigger holes in the flesh underneath,