In my Ruger American predator I use 41.4 grains of H4350; Couldn't be happier with the accuracy. I've only taken one animal, a blacktail at 25 yards. I'm glad I didn't have to track it because the was no blood at all. I couldn't find the entry hole until I skinned it. I found 100 grains of the bullet in two pieces on the far side.
Backing up to the previous morning, I dropped a buck in his tracks at 300 yards. All I saw from my prone position was four legs kicking in the air. Done deal, so I thought. I start to chamber another round and look up and he's up on his front feet trying to get his rear legs under him. The bullet jammed in the magazine and I had to smack it a couple times before I could close the bolt. By this time he's on the move and I see a good trail of blood about 12 inches long streaming down the body. The hit was high, above the lungs, below the spine. I gave it about 30 minutes before I went up to where he hit the deck and found a small patch of blood. Beyond that I only found one drop in the immediate area. I went down into the trees where he headed and after 2 hours I found another couple of drops. About this time two friends showed up to help and we found a few more drops and established the direction he was traveling. From there we didn't find any more sign in 3 hours.
I was pretty sick about loosing him didn't even want to go back out the next day until my buddy told me "it happens" and to get my ass back out go hunt. I spent 3 hours the next morning looking for the buck not even thinking about looking for deer when the buck I killed walked right into me as I was gathering my gear after a nature break; I guess it was meant to be.
I'd still love to know weather that deer ran off and died or if it penciled through and it stopped bleeding. I read on another forum about a guy that put an arrow in the same area and didn't recover the deer. A month later he shot the same deer with a rifle.
Kind of a long winded way to say that I'm not sold on the ELD-X.
