Hornady 180 eld-m VS 180 Hybrid

[lawrence97]

Has anyone gotten a chance to play with these new bullets and compare them to the hybrids?

They seem like a viable and cheaper option if their published BC's perform as they say. Using them would also keep me from spending time tipping the hybrids.

I have created a thread in the reloading section so that you can post any findings:

http://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/hornady-180-eld-m-loads.3926167/

 

[FeMan]

A friend of mine has done some shooting with the 180 ELDMs in an 8-twist and confirmed a G7 bc of 0.385 out to 1k. He has also shot steel out to 1600 with them and got reliable hits based on that bc. If I had an 8 twist I would be switching.

 

[Bryan Fields]

Following with interest. I've switched to the 162 eld-m in my 9.5 twist 7mms. Excellent accuracy and bc is as advertised.

 

[dskogman]

I shot them at a couple of matches and they shoot a full 2 moa higher than untipped Berger Hybrids at 1K. I am not convinced they are as consistent yet but the BC is great. I had one "miss" with all the rest 10's and 9's. I have never had a miss in over a year of shooting so don't know what happened but a zero pretty much takes you out of the competition. Another guy was shooting them and shot very well. The load was 51.3 g of H4350.

 

[lawrence97]

My freebore ended up being too short for this bullet and I was not able to get consistent results at 200 yds during development. I would get a few .25" groups at 200 and keeping everything the same, I would try the same thing a day later and it yielded 2" groups! I checked bedding, swapped scopes and the rest of things one would consider checking when things get erratic.

My bullets were definitely seating beyond the dreaded "donut" and running a seating depth test from zero to .020" jump made no difference.

I have since increased my freebore by .065" and the bullet is clear of the "donut". I will do another powder/seating test to see if freebore and the "donut" was the issue.