Effective range for 6.5 Grendel?

Double Naught Spy said:

I am not sure what you consider to be a "clean" kill, but I will try to address this anyway.

The 1000 ft lb (and more) number does not equal real world clean kills. Plenty of people hunt with less powerful calibers and do just fine. The 1000 ft lbs is just some arbitrary number somebody came up with at some point that now has become sort of ingrained as the magical threshold point when there is no magical threshold, though more energy certainly is usually better than less energy, if you are looking for a side to err on, right?

All other things being equal (which they rarely ever are), as you drop in caliber size and energy on target, several things come into play including smaller holes, less bullet expansion, less tissue damage, and less chance for getting the benefit of hydrostatic shock to bring down an animal immediately with a non-direct CNS shot. Non-CNS larger holes tend to result in animals bleeding out more or suffocating faster than smaller holes. Larger holes with greater damage have a greater likelihood of damaging vital structures that potentially would be missed by smaller holes. With smaller and less powerful calibers, your need for shooting precision increases in order to make 'clean' kills.

So another factor comes into play. This is bullet performance. How much will a given bullet expand and penetrate to damage tissue and how quickly does this happen? I would happily take a good expanding Grendel round over a non-expanding .308 round, for example, even though the .308 is a larger caliber impact with more energy on target than the Grendel at the same distance.

While I am not a big believer in "energy" except where it relates to bullet performance, some people think energy is what kills and put a lot of stock into energy figures. I am not here to debate whether or not energy kills as I am not trying to change you way of thinking, but if you think energy on target is important, be careful how you evaluate this. There is a particular YouTuber that makes a big deal about how much energy was delivered to the target when he talks about his bullets. "Energy delivered to the target" is made based in a calculation of bullet weight, muzzle velocity, and distance of the target from the muzzle. However, where this guy has a problem is that he fails to understand the difference between bullets that arrive with X energy and stay within the target (depositing or dumping all their X energy) and bullets that arrive with X energy and zip right through the target (X - Energy bullet exited with). So if you are an energy guy, you don't want bullets zipping right through.

Some people definitely want entry AND exit holes to promote good bleeding out that more readily produces blood trails. Maybe this is what you like and then you don't want a bullet that dumps all the energy inside the animal because there will only be an entry hole, right?

I don't have a lot of experience with Grendel Hornady SST 123 gr. beyond 250 yards, but inside 250 yards, the poorest performance just seems to be good (although irregular) expansion much like a softpoint and the best performance seems to be as a deep penetrating frangible round. I have had these rounds often overpenetrate (exit) hogs up to 225 lbs on a broadside shoulder shot (distances inside 200 yards) but the bullets have usually fragmented along the way and only part of the bullet is exiting.

What I would consider to be a clean kill is any kill that results in a DRT (dropped dead where it was hit) CNS shot, either by direct damage to the upper central nervous system (bullet impacting upper spinal cord, brain, brain stem) or indirectly (Upper CNS damage produced by hydraulic and/or hydrostatic shock where the bullet does not directly damage those tissues). The Grendel has only what I would consider to be a limited ability to deliver indirect CNS hydrostatic shock kills on large game. Heavier, higher velocity rounds tend to do a better job with this. Only rarely will I get a hydrostatic shock kill on a hog where the bullet impacts vertically lower down in the chest cavity, nowhere near the spine, and yet the hog drops dead in place. I tend to get a lot more of what look like indirect hydraulic kills where the bullet passes next to the upper spine where the wound channel includes the spine, but there is no actually bullet impact damage to the spine.

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Armorer 101 said:

I also have a 6.5 Grendel and ended up with four 6.8s, by a mistake, was given two 6.8 barrels….. 6.8 in a 1-11.5 twist is a waste of time, only shoots 90 gr bullets, yea….
My Grendel with 120 SMKs at a BC of .421, the 123 SST is .422 will do 2,588 fps with 2015 BR. The Grendel really is a 4-500 yard deer cartridge with the SST design, soft spire point front, solid rear, and its high BC. With a 6.5 bullet the general 30 cal mind set of 165 to 180 g bullets simply does not apply, especially where the deer are fairly small, like here in FL.

Just talked to a fellow that had his son shoot a deer with his Grendel bolt gun at 150 yards with the 123 SST, blew the heart out the back side. DRT.

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Double Naught Spy said:

I recently finished up some testing of 125 gr. Partitions on hogs. Grendel muzzle velocity is about mid range in their expansion envelope. When I was able to recover the bullets, I found that they had not expanded fully (not peeled back fully), but generally worked as described. Penetration was from 13" to 24" with the latter being on lengthwise shots. I had one bullet that failed to expand, it was on a hog shot multiple times and so I could not control for what the bullet hit or even which trajectory it took through the hog.

This video won't play here because it is an 18 and over video because it shows necropsy stuff, but it was my final Grendal 125 gr. Partition video.

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Double Naught Spy said:

I don't think the 125 gr. Partition is the best fit for the Grendel, but it isn't a bad fit. I have certainly tried worse hunting rounds. I hope to be trying the 100 gr. Partitions in the near future.

I am not eating the meat, so I like a bullet that does a lot of destruction. My favorites are ...
Hornady SST 123 gr.
Federal Speer TNT 90 gr.
Druid Hill Armory loaded Maker Rex 110 gr. (all copper)
Precision Firearms loaded Berger VLD-Hunting 130 gr.

All of these bullets tend to come apart, often very impressively. The SST is just a good, common standard. The Federal Speer TNT 90 gr. is a 'varmint' round that works very well on hogs out to 200 yards or so with a higher velocity, flatter trajectory, and often total or near total destruction of the bullet in the process. The Maker Rex bullets also come apart and create a goodly amount of havoc and are non-lead. If I have to go to a non-lead bullet, this will be my choice (at this time, anyway). The Berger VLD-Hunting 130 did NOT perform as advertised (enter, expand violently, dump all energy inside the body, not exit). Instead it tended to create large, exceptionally nasty wound channels with lots of pieces left behind and exit wounds. It was a good penetrator. What I didn't like about it was that the velocity was lower (heavier bullet) and the trajectory not as flat. When PF was making these, they were fairly expensive compared to getting Hornady or Federal Speer TNT.

Of course, my likes or dislikes are not at the expense of somebody else's preferred bullets. It simply all depends on what sort of performance you are looking for. Quite likely if I was hunting, I would end up shooting Speer Gold Dot 120s. They are a consistent performing softpoint round with good weight retention and generally holding together well. They are also fairly inexpensive.

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BigBlue 94 said:

I got in on grendel early and have a decent stock. But yeah, i rarely see anything grendel lately. Brownells did have some wolf classic steel case ammo a couple weeks ago.

Not 100% sure but it might be able to be formed from X39 cases.

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