Hi all, new Elk hunter here with a Seekins PH3 6.5 PRC 24”
Per Jim and others, if hunting Elk with a 6.5PRC, a solid copper bullet would be a good choice to achieve deep penetration. That being said, which factory ammo below would you hunt with? I’m probably overanalyzing this, but this is part of the fun for me :).
Remington Premium CuT 130gr. shoots awesome (~.5” moa groups) and performs well @ 2920 7 SD. (SOLID COPPER)
Norma Bondstrike 143gr. shoots even better (sub ~.5” groups) and also performed well @ 2910 15sd (BONDED LEAD CORE)
The Norma has a much higher BC and really retains velo and energy.(see attached ballistic charts) wind is also better, but not much.
So, monolithic copper with a max range of 400 (probably my max hunting range anyway?), or a Bonded bullet with superior range and ballistics?
One little wrinkle…I reside in CA and plan on doing some hog/bear hunting. So that will need to be the cooper….If I go with Copper for Elk, then I will never need to switch ammo, nor clean when switching (per Jim’s recent video on shooting copper after shooting lead).
My preference would be the bond strike for elk. It’ll stay together well and still penetrate deep, but a bigger mushroom. For CA, it might be worth testing some other copper loads like Hornady CX and Barnes to see if there’s one load you can just stick with.
Thanks, Jim, yeah, I actually tried both, lol. The CX grouped just fine, sub MOA, but just did not perform as well as the Remington CuT. CX was 2830fps 25sd
I really wanted the Barnes LRX to perform well, but surprisingly, my rifle just didn’t like it, and it would not group under 1moa. also, being a127gr. it too did not stack against the Rem CuT. Barnes ballistics below
I can vouch for the bond strike . Shot a spike last year 380 yards pass through heart shot. Did not recover the projectile but the damage could be seen.
He didn’t go 20 foot..
That’s great to hear. After posting this, I did some reading and watching on the Bondstrike, and my takeaways were that it’s a ‘softer’ bonded bullet that seems to fragment at close range and doesn’t seem to penetrate as deeply as other bonded bullets (Accubond or Scirocco). The Accubond shot well out of my rifle as well, but much more expensive($20 more a box) and the ballistics were very similar to the Remington CuT, so I eliminated it as an option.
My friend shot a bull at 200 yards with factory 145 grain eldx in 270 and it performed perfect.
The factory eldx in my 6.5 prc shoots horrible though.
I will eventually try the 127 ttsx, I have shot the 156 oryx and it shoots well out of my rifle. If I ever draw an elk tag in a short range scenario I’m using the oryx.
