Hornady 123gr. ELD-M and 123gr. A-MAX for coyotes??

[tdbru]

Horde,
Thankfully I came into quite a few boxes of factory Hornady Black and A-MAX. both 123 gr. I suspect the only difference is the type of plastic used in the tip. I realize a lot of folks hunt big game with these bullets successfully. I want to apply them against coyotes, but am concerned that a coyote just doesn't have enough body mass to get these to expand at all and it will be like hitting them with a 123gr. FMJ and they will take off and die on nearby people's property and they'll have to deal with the carcass as I won't be able to recover it (no trespassing), which I'd rather not have happen. I would prefer they expire very close to where they get hit. I do not have experience with either of these loads, yet, against coyotes. If you do have some coyote experience with either of these loads, please let me know if there were any hits where the coyote ran off and you suspected no expansion. On the other hand, if you've hit a lot of coyotes with them and have always had evidence of good expansion and the coyotes expired close to where they were hit, that would be good to know too. I scrolled back through posts, but haven't done a in depth search so if that info is in the archives, apologies for being too lazy to search through the archives.
best to you,
tdbru

[kmon]

A coyote will never know the difference between those 2. A whole lot of an animal running off though is where the animal is hit and the path of the bullet takes through the body. First two coyotes I shot with the Grendel never took a step, one facing straight away flipped its tail to the side and I hit it directly in the round bullseye, it sat very quickly quivered and fell over. His running mate stopped at 247 yards and took the shot through both shoulders never moved after that other than dropping and flipping its tail a few times. I do not recall ever hitting a coyote with either of those bullets that went more than 50 yards other than one I gutshot.

As far as running a ways the only round I have never had a coyote run after being hit is a 17 Remington that starts 25gr bullets at 4200fps. No exits but lots of internal damage. I guess Roy Weatherby was right "speed kills".

[Stinky Coyote]

I kill them for pictures not fur, 123 eld-m all I use, it works good but it's way too much bullet really, deer size game isn't much of a test for it and really only sharper quartering on deer size game do you get to see the 20" or so of work these bullets can do. So you probably would get less runners shorter overall recoveries by matching frangible with much less sd at higher speeds for the coyotes...speed up some 95's etc. and that would be the better match but a deal is a deal, and the 123's kill them very well. The rule with coyotes for what's best...which gun, which load, etc. is whatever is in your hands.

my favourite fur friendly dumper of them was .204 ruger with 39 gr blitzkings when you could buy them from federal factory ammo....but remember the 35 gr Berger hand loaded was a top fur collectors load....you're not gonna get anywhere near that sort of perfection for coyotes with a 6.5 grendel...but at least you have perspectives of what's perfect and what to aim for