The grendel is in an AR, and this was my third outing with it. Cannot get it to shoot. May be sending the barrel back to Odin Works for them to check, as it came with a 1 MOA guarantee. Hornady 123 grain SST and ELD are around 3-4". Crown looks good, don't know what it would be.
Gonna say there’s something wrong. With the 123 ELD, my latest Grendel will shoot ~1MOA to 800yrds even when shooting on the clock. I used mine to practice for a progressive “hit to advance” match back in January, all shots on 8x12” Targets. I had a lot of lead up time, so I took plenty of practice to develop DOPE for the match, using 8” round plates. Only at 900 did I feel like the rifle wasn’t holding Hornady Black 123 ELD’s tightly enough to connect on EVERY shot.
Anyone that has killed more than a few deer with the Grendel want to weigh in? Talk me into/out of this tiny little cartridge as a deer slayer.
Compared to the .270 or .30-06, the Grendel is as you described - a tiny little cartridge.
But...
It’s more than enough for the job, as long as you’re not trying to reach 500yrds across beanfields. Guys have done it, but it's not a reliable game. I started hunting the Grendel in 2005, and have been in and out of the round a few times. I’ve predominantly used my Grendel’s for meat doe, and back then, we could take up to 8 per season, plus any nuisance animal tags I could pick up with landowners nearby. I’ve also hunted the 6.8 SPC for as long, virtually identical performance on white tails and hogs. Between the two, I would guess I have 40-50 hogs and 15-20, maybe 25 deer under these rounds. Including my buck this season.
I haven’t killed enough with the 123 ELD to say it would be my number one choice for 300yrd+ shots on 300lb+ Midwest Whitetails, but I didn’t feel undergunned in the least going after the 2 bucks we were targeting this winter. That confidence was proven right. The 123 SST should give a little more reliable weight retention than the ELD, but after hunting it this year, I have every confidence in it for 0-300yrd whitetail harvest.
Stuck the ELD right through the pump house - he wasn't going far after that... I've stuck NBT's and Ballistic Silvertips through the pump house just like this, pushed by the .30-06, with very similar carnage.
The bullet pictured below stalled under the hide on the far side. As I've mentioned in other threads here, many guys might call this weight retention a "failure," but it did the job, exactly as I expected of a tipped bullet. It did hit with relatively high impact velocity, only 35yrds. After hunting poly tipped bullets for over 20yrs, I was more worried about bullet failure at close ranges than I was of failures at longer ranges. I'd be happy to employ this load out to 300yrds on any whitetail in the woods.
Here's a visual comparison, sort of, between the relative impact power of the 6.5 Grendel, at right, and the 6mm Creedmoor. At 600yrds, you can see the difference in impact energy in the bullet splashes. The Grendel was barely clearing the base paint, whereas the Creedmoor was splashing bare metal larger than a 50 cent piece.
