Federal bulk pack .223

[Rossignol]

We did some shooting yesterday. Had to, goin out of my mind here...

I had bought a box of the 100 round bulk pack from WalMart and not at an incredible savings, but decent enough, $37 before tax.

We had previously sighted the rifle and were happy with it, placing rounds on target. Maybe not a ragged hole, or clover leafed, but on the bull from 25 yards to hitting clays from 80 to 100 yards.

We loaded the Fed bulk ammo and started with our 25 yard targets. Not impressed, I thought the problem was mine maybe or I had messed up my sights or something. For the heck of it we tried the clays out in the field.

Every round from a few different magazines were breaking just a little high and right. No idea why. I adjusted my sights slightly, but had to revert them back when we switched back to our Fed XM193 and AE black box, which were all consistent.

After gettin the sights back on with our prefered ammo, the only change we had to make was for our hold at about 50 to 60 yards.

EDIT:

Forgot to ask if anyone had ever had any similar experience with such variation from switching to another load?

 

[rjpoog1989]

I have had huge differences with loads for my .243 win. I've learned there are huge differences from brand to brand as well as size of bullet and charge of powder, type of powder, and even just a simple primer change. I have to rezero my scope going from a deer load (100 grain bullets) to a groundhog load (85 grain bullets) due to different point of impact.

 

[John A.]

Usually, all of the same brand ammo will group well, but when chaning to different makers and especially different weight bullets, the (zero) point of impact will change some between them.

Usually not a great deal of change of impact, but enough to notice on paper.

As a genral rule of thumb, hotter (and lighter) ammunition will group higher on paper and heavier and weaker bullets will strike lower.

Inconsistently loaded bullets will strike all over the place like a shotgun pattern (surplus import bullets are especially known for that)

 

[mingaa]

I recently did an ammo test with the new Taurus 709 (9mm pocket pistol) and was underwhelmed with the performance of bulk federal.

Wednesday I'll be running everything that I have in 9mm through a new Glock 34. I'll post results.

On my last outing with my AR my seat-of-the-pants meter had me wondering about the bulk Federal I was shooting - wrote some of it of to a the shooter and the relatively new state of the gun.

Federal has been beating some other standards in the big box environments (white box Winchester in particular) - are they being a loss leader OR cutting corners??

On another note has anyone shot the brass Herters that has appeared on shelves? It's marked 'by Selier and Beloit' on the box - time to google that story. THAT will be in my 9mm report - the Kahr is going along for baseline as well. I bought some at a great price and have yet to shoot it. Look for target pics later in the week.