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Old November 16, 2015, 12:18 AM   #1
tahunua001
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6.5 grendel VS Elk.

well... it works... sort of.

he sure wasn't breaking any records, and I brought home meat, but performance was not very great despite being close range. long story short, I used very good handloads, made the shots at very close range, on a very small elk, in very good locations, and it still managed to run 200+ yards before dropping. 6.5 grendel is an amazing deer rifle, but anything larger, I recommend a bigger gun.
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Old November 16, 2015, 01:40 AM   #2
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Those calves are sure tasty

What bullet, you shooting Accubonds IIRC?

Yeah, I've done the elk with a 243 thing and while it is possible, I won't do it again. If there is one lesson I've learned in 20 years of hunting elk is that they carry a bullet extremely well and the bigger and tougher the bullet you shoot them with the better. And they STILL do stupid stuff with very fatal wounds. Tough suckers they are.
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Old November 16, 2015, 08:34 AM   #3
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Elk are tough. Thanks for posting your actual experience.
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Old November 16, 2015, 09:46 AM   #4
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Tahunua, congrats on putting meat in the freezer!

Sorry the 6.5 Grendel didn't perform as expected. I don't own one, and I have never had the opportunity to hunt elk, but I am curious since the 6.5X55 is a well respected large game caliber in Scandinavia, and based on your close range, would have expected like you to have better performance. Would you mind sharing the distance of the shot, how the animal was positioned, where entry and exit wounds were and their size, and what kind of internal damage you found when field dressing?
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Old November 16, 2015, 10:25 AM   #5
tahunua001
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I was using 130gr swift scirrocos. the shots were at about 40 and 35 yards, both broadside and inside the boiler room. one deflated the lungs, the other hit the liver and just nicked the stomach. I still had to put one on it's head when I caught up to it to make sure it stayed down. all 3 shots ended up being through and throughs leaving about 1 inch exits, about as good as can be expected with a slow, small profile caliber.

ordinarily, 6.5 swede is shooting bullets 10 to 30 grains heavier travelling 400 to 600 feet per second faster than the grendel... that much energy goes a long way to making better kills. also from what I've heard, moose and stags aren't as tough as elk, despite being bigger in a lot of cases.
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Old November 16, 2015, 10:59 AM   #6
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Nice work. I didn't get my elk this year, so I'm jealous.
The liver/stomach hit sounds a bit back; the lung hit is probably what took him to ground.
Elk are tough.
Although I like the idea of hunting with a 6.5G or a 6.8SPC, your report leads me to think that I'd probably not hunt elk with an AR upper short of a .45/.458/.50 caliber.
Thanks for the real world input
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Old November 16, 2015, 12:54 PM   #7
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Elk don't like to admit that they're dead. Stubborn animals.


Congrats on the filled tag. ...And with some nice, tender meat.
I don't think the 6.5G was a poor choice, at all. But, I wouldn't use it again, either.

One of my brothers kept trying to convince me to use my 6x45mm upper for elk, this year. As much as I'd like to take an elk with it, I just can't bring myself to do it.
When I hunt elk, I want to be able to drop the animal RIGHT THERE! I can't afford to have them run off 200 yards. Sometimes even just another 50 yards can mean hours more work, per trip, packing the thing off the mountain. So, I avoid any shot that isn't guaranteed to be fatal, and I usually try for "anchoring" shots.
I just don't have faith that the 6x45mm can do that job.

Besides, that's why I have been building other rifles and uppers for the last few years. In addition to the usual suspects, I've added to the lineup: .35 Whelen, .458 SOCOM, .475 Tremor, a lighter .270 Win (in work), and another .444 Marlin (fully functional, but stock work is unfinished).
I think I subconsciously overloaded the 'elk rifle' category so that there'd never be an excuse to use something marginal.
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Old November 16, 2015, 01:49 PM   #8
AllenJ
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Quote:
that much energy goes a long way to making better kills.
That is a very interesting statement and one I've thought true for many years. The speed of the bullet creates a larger wound channel while also causing more shock to the animals central nervous system. I don't think we all need to go out and get 300 RUM's for elk but there limits.

Nice elk, should be great eating. Congrats.
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Old November 16, 2015, 05:40 PM   #9
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yeah 6x45 would be pushing it for me too, I don't think I'd even feel comfortable with a 243 min. I also have the same sentiment about anchoring shots but given some inconsistencies with my accuracy under pressure as of late I have decided that neck and head shots should be avoided in the mean time unless it's to put the animal down. , luckily for me, he was working around the edge of an old clear cut and his group moved off the breaks during the day and moved over the edge at night, making them a lot easier to pack out, I actually got to drag him downhill rather than having to pack him up. it was also a short drag, I didn't even end up having to quarter him out, by far the easiest elk hunt I've ever been on.
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Old November 16, 2015, 06:02 PM   #10
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With the right bullets in the right spot it should be just fine. Hunters have used the 6.5X55 as a moose load for decades and lots of guys use that as well as 260 Rem and 6.5 Creedmore on elk at ranges a lot farther than 200 yards.. Those rounds are only about 300 fps faster with 140 gr bullets and about the same speed as your 6.5 Grendel with a 300 yard impact.

I've seen 100 lb whitetails with a 30-06 bullet through both lungs and a 2" exit hole run over 100 yards. Some animals just don't understand that they are supposed to lay down and die when hit. The shot you made was non-survivable. The animal has 15-30 seconds to live. Some choose to lie down and die, others make mad dash for a few seconds. It doesn't prove the round isn't capable.
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Old November 16, 2015, 06:09 PM   #11
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Unless I'm missing something here--the Grendel is 264--not 243.
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Old November 16, 2015, 11:23 PM   #12
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I think you are missing something

Several comparisons to 6mm cartridges which many consider in the same category at the 6.5 Grendel (light for elk).
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Old November 16, 2015, 11:49 PM   #13
tahunua001
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also a lot of 6mm(243) AR platform conversations as both are popular alternate calibers for AR15s.
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Old November 17, 2015, 05:30 AM   #14
stagpanther
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A few years ago I built a 264 lbc AR--as I recall when I researched the Grendel forum for hunting loads there was a very popular account of dropping an elk with a Grendel at 3 or 400 yds or so making the rounds.
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Old November 17, 2015, 07:32 AM   #15
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I was wanting to compare your 40 yard velocity and energy to a 6.5X55 at range, knowing full well that the Swede benefits from additional powder capacity and increased resultant velocity.

But 2 body shots through and through, with the first getting the lungs... The cartridge definitely gave its all. I have heard from many who have actual elk under their belts that they are tough critters. This is just more confirmation of that.

As has been said, I've seen some deer take an incredible amount of punishment and do unthinkable things. In my home state, a hunting partner hit a doe with a .270 pushing 130 grain soft points. At the first shot, there was no movement. He reloaded, and fired again. No movement. Then as he's pondering the problem, the doe walks off. She was found 100 yards away with 2 .270 holes through her chest, lots of damage, lungs gone, but she still managed to do it!

We can talk ballistics and numbers, which is good, but in the end, the animal still gets a vote.
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Old November 17, 2015, 09:55 AM   #16
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Yeah, shot placement and good penetration are vital. Especially on larger animals. This year I killed my elk with a 270, my wife killed her elk with a 308 and my friend killed his with the same 308.
My elk was a broadside shot at long range with a 160 grain Nosler Partition .270. The hit was through a rib and the liver and angled back through the gut. The elk turned to run and I added a bit more windage (the wind was blowing full value from left to right at about 40 MPH) and fired the second shot. That dropped the elk. 1st bullet went through and the second went from in front of the hip to the front of the chest on the other side. I found it under the skin.

My wife's elk was a running shot with a 308 using 150 grain Winchester Power Point bullets on a super accurate handload of 4895. The elk acted disinterested. She shot again and hit the elk mid body but it kept going. It fell after going about 250 yards. She killed it with a 45 when we got to it. It was down, but still able to raise it's head.

My friend borrowed the 308 and killed his elk with the same load. He fired 5 times and hit it 3. He made a very bad shot on one of them but I am unsure which one of the first 4 shots is was. He shot the rear right leg about 6" above the joint. One shot missed completely. One shot hit the liver and one shot hit the heart. The elk was also still able to "sit up" when he got to it so he killed it with a brain shot.

I have seen a lot of elk killed in about 40 years of hunting them and guiding hunters, and killed a large number of them myself. Some drop at the shot but quite a few will run off a bit, even when hit right. If you get full penetration through the vitals you have a good blood trail to follow and MOST will only go a short distance, but sometimes they go and go and go. a bad bullet that doesn't penetrate will give you a tracking job you will not forget anytime soon. Trust me.....I know about that!

Small guns like the 6.5 Grendell and the 243 are OK in the hands of a super good shot, but I consider them to be guns of the experts, not the novice when used on elk.
Use enough gun! "Enough" is subjective. What is enough for a hunter with 2 years of experience and 200 rounds of practice is going to differ from what is "enough" for a hunter with 40 years of experience and 30,000 rounds of practice. Be honest with yourself and others, and if in doubt lean towards a heavier bullet.
If recoil is a problem install pads, mercury flasks and muzzle breaks, but please respect these grand animals enough to not risk wounding one to run off and be un-tagged.

ARs are made in real elk killing calibers. 458 SOCOM comes to mind.

I have not killed an elk with my 6.8 SPC and I may never do it. I have some Barnes X bullets loaded and I have hunted them once with my 6.8, but I didn't find any elk. Now that I have seen the 6.8 in action on elk (my friend in Montana killed 3 with on I made for him) I see it worked ok, but no bullet exited. He killed all 3 with perfect heart and lung shots and none fell as quickly as I'd have liked. All went about 75-100 yards. None left much of a blood trail because the only blood that got out came from the mouth and nose and a very small amount from the entrance wounds.

Again, I say such small shells and light bullets are experts guns. My friend is a former SWAT sniper from New Mexaco, and a very good shot, but now with 3 kills from his 6.8 he also agrees with me, and went back to his 30-06.

I do not believe the "gun-rags" that try to say you have to shoot a 300 mag or larger to have a real elk rifle. But I do like to see guns that shoot bullets of about 140 grains or more with bullets that don't come apart.
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