So, Hornady has expanded their offering of loaded ammo with their new line of bullets, ELD line that was slated to change everything. It seems that Hornady determined that their polymer tips were melting in flight and causing a deterioration in long range accuracy. So they revamped the bullet and added a new polymer tip, resulting in a slightly lower BC at short range, but higher downrange BC. They offer the ELD-M (match) and -X (hunting) bullets but only offer the ELD-M as loaded ammo right now. Discussion on another forum indicated folks were having good success with the ELD-M on all sorts of critters including hogs. Logic would dictate that you don't use match ammo on larger, tougher game such as hogs. As the argument goes, it isn't designed for hunting and no doubt some match ammo has been an extremely poor performer when used for hunting. However, there are LOTS of folks that swear by AMAX for hunting deer, elk (various calibers), and some that like it for hogs. It wasn't designed for this task, but has a loyal following. So here, the logic is that just because it wasn't designed for hunting does not mean it won't work for hunting...so let's find out. To be honest, I sort of expected this stuff to violently come apart with poor penetration.
Results were a bit bizarre. Had I stopped with the first hog, I would be quite excited about this ammo. It dropped a 240 lb boar with good penetration and a lot of organ damage (only going through 1 rib). On the 2nd recovered hog, results were more ambiguous. Shot #1 wounded the hog and slowed it down, but this was just a soft tissue grazing wound to the right hindquarter. Shot #2 into it seemed to enter from above and drop down alongside the neck and dropped the hog. As I was trying to shoot another not, I spied the sow making her labored getaway. Shot #2 should have been hugely disruptive and apparently was not. I had a short wound track but could not find the bullet or that it had exited. Bizarre. Shot #3 was at about 130 yards and shattered the left scapula, took out 4" of rib, traversed the thoracic cavity hitting the centra of 2 thoracic vertebrae, breaking through a rib on the other side, before embedding itself in the opposite side scapula. All in all, shot #3 seemed to perform exceptionally well, more along the lines of what I would see from SST ammo.
Results were a bit bizarre. Had I stopped with the first hog, I would be quite excited about this ammo. It dropped a 240 lb boar with good penetration and a lot of organ damage (only going through 1 rib). On the 2nd recovered hog, results were more ambiguous. Shot #1 wounded the hog and slowed it down, but this was just a soft tissue grazing wound to the right hindquarter. Shot #2 into it seemed to enter from above and drop down alongside the neck and dropped the hog. As I was trying to shoot another not, I spied the sow making her labored getaway. Shot #2 should have been hugely disruptive and apparently was not. I had a short wound track but could not find the bullet or that it had exited. Bizarre. Shot #3 was at about 130 yards and shattered the left scapula, took out 4" of rib, traversed the thoracic cavity hitting the centra of 2 thoracic vertebrae, breaking through a rib on the other side, before embedding itself in the opposite side scapula. All in all, shot #3 seemed to perform exceptionally well, more along the lines of what I would see from SST ammo.
