Factory ammo

Eaglet said:

What ammo do Military Snipers use?

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I know for a fact that many of them prefer Federal Gold Medal Match ammo. They use it for F-class and practice shooting. They also use the M118LR when they can get their hands on it for after duty use. They also prefer the Black Hills Match. On some forums they are preferring the new Hornady Superformance Match also. If I told ya how I got this info, I would have to kill ya! Just kidding.

Tank

What it ALL boils down to is.....if you only shoot 40 rounds yearly...fine....go pay out ya arse for factory ammo! If you shoot thousands of rounds yearly like I do.......and want the best performance possible.......have enough get up and go and get off ya arse and reload!!

Sharpsman said:

What it ALL boils down to is.....if you only shoot 40 rounds yearly...fine....go pay out ya arse for factory ammo! If you shoot thousands of rounds yearly like I do.......and want the best performance possible.......have enough get up and go and get off ya arse and reload!!

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Right! That's what I do, I'm to cheap to buy ammo.

Tank

I've never been able to save money by reloading.

...it just allows me to shoot twice as much.

The best ammo for LR is the ammo you practice with.

Several years ago when Rem came out with the Accu-tip, they sent me 3 boxes of 7 mag 150 gr to test. My rifle was the Sendero. My theory for factory ammo was the inconsistent powder charge due to the speed of mass production. The Accu-tip is made by Hornady and it's the SST. I started the test by weighing all the cartridges and separating them into groups of High, Medium, and Low weights. The overall weight spread was 4 grains. Test range was 200 yds. Choosing one round from each group of the High, Med, Low produced an average of 1.5 inch group @ 200 yds. Then I began shooting rounds using only the High weighted. Groups were .760. All Med shot average .732 . All Lows average group was .810. So if a person who doesn't want the reload will just invest in a balance beam scale you may achieve the accuracy that you desire. Granted 60 rounds is not enough for hard core science but it does show a trend. It may work for you.

liltank said:

Right! That's what I do, I'm to cheap to buy ammo.

Tank

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rscott5028 said:

I've never been able to save money by reloading.

...it just allows me to shoot twice as much.

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I'll second both of these.

liltank said:

I know for a fact that many of them prefer Federal Gold Medal Match ammo. They use it for F-class and practice shooting. They also use the M118LR when they can get their hands on it for after duty use. They also prefer the Black Hills Match. On some forums they are preferring the new Hornady Superformance Match also. If I told ya how I got this info, I would have to kill ya!

Just kidding.

Tank

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Thanks liltank, for both, the info and not killing me!

I've had alot of factory barrel varmint rifles over the years. I always shot factory ammo first, just to get a baseline and velocity. But only one rifle out of the batch shot factory ammo into the small groups that I could get by handloading. That rifle now belongs to a friend and that particular ammo is no longer made......needless to say, he's handloading for it now.

Most factory ammo I've tested won't usually shoot better than 3/4 moa. But many times, I've been able to get the same gun to shoot 1/4-1/2 moa with good handloads.

As mentioned above, it's really got alot to do with practice. I couldn't have afforded to shoot the barrels out of 3 different rifles (about 12000 rounds) if I was buying factory ammo for all that shooting.

Eaglet said:

What ammo do Military Snipers use?

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It ain't factory

Nearly 14 years later...

I started reloading many years ago because I was able to create ammunition that I could duplicate over and over.
I dont have confidence in factory ammo for 500+ to repeat itself over and over

Reading this thread should make any long range hunter think really hard about relying solely on factory ammo: