The Beginning
In 2012, Hornady engineers were tasked with creating a new bullet. The main goal was to have a hunting bullet that worked well at all practical distances. Plenty of bullets work well from 0-400 yards, few work well beyond that and none work well at both conventional and extended range. While “extended range” means different things to different people, and taking game at longer distances is a debated topic, there’s a growing segment of hunters who are using technological advances in electronics, optics, rifles and ammunition to extend their range. What’s been lacking has been projectiles that offer the accuracy AND terminal performance appropriate for extended range hunting. A common trend has been to use match bullets at extended range because they have thinner copper-jackets that are perceived to expand easier at distance when the bullet has shed a lot of velocity.
Creating a bullet that performs well at extended range would have been relatively easy. In true Hornady fashion, there was no interest in doing what was easy. The decision was to make an “all range” bullet that performs at both conventional (0-400 yards) and extended (400+) range.
Crucial ingredients were identified and deemed necessary for an all range hunting bullet:
Match accurate: The bullet had to have the accuracy and consistency of a match bullet. This means a balanced bullet that has a precision swaged lead core and a jacket with the utmost concentricity.
High Ballistic Coefficients: The more aerodynamic the bullet, the more velocity and energy it carries down range. It also will suffer less wind drift and drop than a bullet of lesser aerodynamic design.
Performance and expansion across the full velocity spectrum: This bullet had to have controlled expansion at both conventional and extended range. Simply having a bullet that will tumble, yaw, blow up or pencil through is not acceptable. The bullet had to expand/mushroom at extended range (low velocity) and not over-expand or blow up at conventional (high velocity) range.