New 6.5 Grendel Load is a Slayer

SnowmanMo

Administrator
Staff member
In a recent post, you might have seen that I started working up some Commiefornia compliant lead free hand loads fot the 6.5 Grendel for one of our members that lives over there. Well along the way I came across a pretty good deal on some 123 gr Hornady BTHP's. So I decided to take the chance on them.

With a proven coyote killing 6.5 load using the Lehigh Controlled Chaos, I started there, but the BTHP's just didn't seem to want to go as fast as I thought that they needed to for proper expansion. Clocking factory Hornady 123 SST's at an average of 2529 fps out of my 16in 6.5 Grendel I used that as my benchmark. But even pushing the Ramshot X-Terminator powder up to the top of the range just didn't seem to be getting me there. In fact I started to notice my groups opening up the more powder I used. So, I went back for some more research and decided to try the Ramshot Tac powder next.

At 27.5-27.7 grains, with a COAL of 2.260in, I was clocking the 123 BTHP's at an average of 2570 fps with sub MOA accuracy. When I tried to push up the powder to 28.3 grains, I wasn't gaining any speed but my accuracy started to suffer and I began to pressure signs, so I backed the powder down and decided it was time for field trials.

Of course, things slowed way down on the coyote front as of late. Typical when you have something you need to try. Well, things here in the desert Southwest have heated up in more ways than one, and the coyotes have started moving and behaving more typically. So I was finally able to put lead to fur.

Well, the first coyote went down to the 123 BTHP, but it wasn't as clean a hit as I would've liked. So we went back out today and dropped coyote #2 with the BTHP's and I can tell you that the results were the same. This one was a nice clean left side chest hit behind the elbow with a solid 2 inch long and over 1 inch wide exit out the right side. That's proof enough for me. The Hornady 123 grain BTHP is an effective and economical bullet for handloading in the 6.5 Grendel.

20200718_070528 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr

20200718_070402 by Jason Mosler, on Flickr

I will be happy to share the exit hole pics with you, just PM me.
 
I have been having mixed results killing Hogs with the 6.5G. The 123 Hornaday bullets sometimes went threw like an Ice pick and were very expensive. We tried 100gr Hollow points and did not get deep enough penetration. Right now we are using 120 gr soft points but have not had enough marginal hits to judge them.
 
I have a Grendel upper, haven’t shot it in a while. I was loading TAC, bought some 8208 to try. I’ll keep your load info in mind next time I look at my data.

That coyote looks scraggly.
 
One of our guys had good results with the Hornady Amax’s on hogs knocking down 11 of them. I haven’t seen anyone using the ELD or ELDX’s on them.

I would think this 123 bthp would do fine on them, be curious to see. Plus these bullets were reasonably priced at $54 for 250.

I was concerned that they would zip through coyotes but I got pretty good expansion.
 
Back
Top