I loaded a few rounds to shoot over the chrono this afternoon. Ramshot suggests 46.2 grains Big Game as max for both 150 E-Tip and 150 TTSX, both loaded rather short. Since I'm loading long, I figured I'd see what 46.2 gr would do for the 150 ELDX.
The average for 3 shots was 2828 fps, ES of 24. Interestingly enough, the one shot I chronoed of 42.2 Varget gave the same velocity.
Here's the kicker: the 140 Partition load my other Tikka loves ran 2925 for 3 shots with an ES of 12! That's 45 fps more than my other rifle.
Not only that, but the 120 BT load clocked 3189, but just one shot.
Trees make strange shooting medium. If anything they can actually hold a bullet together. I have a buddy that had a pretty long tracking job on a deer and when he finally got it and was gutting it he found the bullet 100% virtually intact with a nose cone barely altered and beautiful rifling down the shank. He was scratching his head on how that bullet could have stayed in the deer at normal speed without expansion and went back and retraced the shot. He found it passed through a small tree before hitting the deer. He kept the bullet and showed it to me....it was pretty cool.
Same here, put a 300 Weatherby 180 Sierra PH thru an 8" telephone pole. Blew right through it and they are fence. I was sorta astounded since they aren't especially tough bullets. I figured that Bullet at 3250 would have NEVER made it thru.
I measured the groups, outside to outside, then subtract a diameter. All three are under an inch, the largest not by much, but the 41 gr Varget was a bit over 0.7". Speed is 2722 and I'm hoping for 100fps more, which is what 42.2 gets me. I'll play with the depth between the two 42.2 loads and see what happens.
Worst case scenario I have a good load at 2722, and accuracy kills.
That's 2825 fps worth of Varget at 4 seating depths, the two sub moa on the ends with the difference divided by three. Let's see where that takes us.
Here's the next iteration, with 2828 fps worth of Big Game. This one gets 8 bites at the apple, since I can seat as long as I want. The longest is about 0.005" into the lands, backing off around 0.040" each time. BG is the bee's knees for 120 and 140 grain bullets, I have high hopes.
Im not trying to highjack your post, but I have some pictures I thought Id share in regards to the 150gr ELD-x.
I loaded them in my 280 AI this past deer season and was able to take 3 deer with them.
The first 2 were bang flop DRT kills that were 55 and 125 yards respectively. The last deer was a poor shot on my part that resulted in a gut shot and after tracking required a follow up finisher shot. I wound up recovering the bullet from the finishing shot. Id have to look for the post shot stats, but I recall it retained a little more than .33% + of its weight and expanded to roughly double its original diameter.
Load was as follows.
280 Ackley Improved - 24inch pipe - avg mz vel 2963fps
60.5gr h4831sc
Hornady 150gr ELD-x
Fed 210gm match