anyone have luck getting GS custom bullets

[MontanaRifleman]

Update,
I have been in contact with the dealer and he informed me of the problems that GS was having. He assures me that the bullets are still coming but that they were held up by customs. He has always been extremly fast at returning my e-mails but after I didnt hear from him for a few weeks and the bullets being paid for I was starting to worry that I got ripped off.. After talking to him and understanding that he didnt get my e-mails (I cant blame him if they never made it there) I will deal with him again as in the past he has been very friendly and very fast as getting replys except for the times the computer ate my messages to him, and that is my fault for jumping to conclusions and expecting the worst
Thanks guys for the replys and its good to know that everyone is having problems getting these bullets..

Tony,

Please keep us informed on the performance of these bullets when you shoot them. I for one am very interested in hearing the results.

Thanks,

MR

 

[Lightvarmint]

LV, have you specifically shot the 177 HV... specifically this bullet...

GS CUSTOM BULLETS - Specifications for use

This is a diagram of the bullet and it looks a lot more aerodynamic than a Nosler AB, BT or E-Tip which advertise BC's of .507- 523. If you have shot them I would be interested in your data... the actual numbers, MV's, down range velocities and drops.

If the BC is even close to .6, that coupled with the fact that they consistantly show velocities 100-200 fps faster than similar weight bullets, put them way ahead, down range, than any of the off-the-shelf bullets. And if their claim of significantly longwer barrel life is true, that is also of great interest to me in a 300 RUM.

The 177's appear to be a much differt bullet than the 173's in BC.

As for their CS... I know and understand the challenges of trying to run a business, and Mr Schultz has taken the time to explain his challanges to us. I will take him at his word until I know differently and am satisfied with his explanation.

I am also under no illusion about the precarious supply situation that exists when trying to obtain bullets from a relatively small bullet maker on the opposite side of the globe. If I end up shooting these bulllets and liking them I will order an apmple number to keep myself in supply for several years.

Good shooting and I hope to try some HAT's before long also,

-MR

MR,

My issue is that the company does not attempt to correct problems and stand behind their merchandise by owning up to and correcting errors in advertisement claims or manufacture.... Had they done that I would be telling that story instead of this one.

Mine are/were the 173s and I suspect the 177s were the fix for the 173s.

Maybe 4 grains made the difference and now they work properly.

Yes they were fast and yes they were accurate.

Out of my 30 STW, I was getting 3500 with the 160 HVs and out of that same barrel the load for the 140 grain Lost River bullets was pushing 3550. You can expect about 15% increase in velocity based on what we saw.

The only way to accurately test barrel life is to get a very long blank and cut it in half and then shoot one versus the other from the same original tube of steel.

You can't compare barrel #1 from one heat to barrel #3 from another heat.... Two different barrels but you can get a ball park value.

With the price that they cost to get to your mailbox for the bullet weight, the barrels had better last a long time.

I think they are great for the smaller calibers and again for the larger big stuff, but for the standard calibers that most use, they will be the most expensive bullet that you can run down the bore.

$75 per 50 for a 173 grain bullet plus shipping and all the headaches with off shore manufacturers it is just not worth the hassle.

Remember, the BCs that are published are not necessarily from testing.... The owner of the company told be he could not test every bullet weight. So, the BC values are supect as well.

There are much better options out there that are much closer to home..

James

 

[Tony 0321]

Tony,

Please keep us informed on the performance of these bullets when you shoot them. I for one am very interested in hearing the results.

Thanks,

MR

As soon as I get them I plan on trying to work up a good load and shooting them out to at least 800 yds anything farther and I have to find a diferent place to shoot.. I will not however get them in time to shoot any bears this spring but I will publish my results with the target shooting.. This fall I will have a chance to try them out on Moose caribou and a grizzly if I get lucky and I hope to be able to publish good results with that... After my results with the 180 grain swift sciroccos last season I am going to be hard to impress as those bullets are absolutly amazing on how quick they put an animal down..
I am hoping to get the same kind of results with the GS bullets but at farther ranges....

 

[Lightvarmint]

As soon as I get them I plan on trying to work up a good load and shooting them out to at least 800 yds anything farther and I have to find a diferent place to shoot.. I will not however get them in time to shoot any bears this spring but I will publish my results with the target shooting.. This fall I will have a chance to try them out on Moose caribou and a grizzly if I get lucky and I hope to be able to publish good results with that... After my results with the 180 grain swift sciroccos last season I am going to be hard to impress as those bullets are absolutly amazing on how quick they put an animal down..
I am hoping to get the same kind of results with the GS bullets but at farther ranges....

Hello,

Good luck. Hopefully they live up to their billing much better than the 173s did. If they don't and since the company will not stand behind the published bullet data, I can tell you first hand that milk and sugar does not change their taste at all....

To even make matters worse, Gerard Schultz informs me that his bullets that he ships out to customers cannot be returned to him via the major carriers (DHL, UPS, FEDEX, ect) that have tracking information available to track shipments....

In other words, if you have to return merchandise, you will have to send it via parcel post without tracking information via the mail system which is the "black hole" of accountabililty. You will never know if it gets there since no tracking is available.....

Just another reason to buy American and keep it simple.

James

 

[Tony 0321]

Hello,

Good luck. Hopefully they live up to their billing much better than the 173s did. If they don't and since the company will not stand behind the published bullet data, I can tell you first hand that milk and sugar does not change their taste at all....

To even make matters worse, Gerard Schultz informs me that his bullets that he ships out to customers cannot be returned to him via the major carriers (DHL, UPS, FEDEX, ect) that have tracking information available to track shipments....

In other words, if you have to return merchandise, you will have to send it via parcel post without tracking information via the mail system which is the "black hole" of accountabililty. You will never know if it gets there since no tracking is available.....

Just another reason to buy American and keep it simple.

James

Thanks for the info on these bullets I was not aware of the misprints of the BC's I did a lot of research on these bullets before I decided to buy them and everywhere I looked I could only find good things about how well they shot but I was not able to find anything anywhere about shooting these bullets at extended ranges... On their website I was impresesed by the published BC's as they had the highest of any hunting bullet I could find, with the Swift sciroccos and the berger VLD being second behind the 177hv's the 173hv's are about the same as the burger or swift bullets.. I know how the sciroccos perform and was highly impressed by them but I could not get them to group very well out of my 300RUM they shot great out of my 300 win mag thuogh. and the sciroccos dont perform well at slower speeds. I am hoping that the 177GS work better than the 173's and have better trojectory even if the published BC's are close they should work great...And i am keeping my fingers crossed since I have already bought them so I will atleast give them a try..

I am curious James if when shooting the 173"s if you were able to calculate the true BC of the bullets just to see how far off the published numbers were if you have that info that would be great thanks

 

[Lightvarmint]

Thanks for the info on these bullets I was not aware of the misprints of the BC's I did a lot of research on these bullets before I decided to buy them and everywhere I looked I could only find good things about how well they shot but I was not able to find anything anywhere about shooting these bullets at extended ranges... On their website I was impresesed by the published BC's as they had the highest of any hunting bullet I could find, with the Swift sciroccos and the berger VLD being second behind the 177hv's the 173hv's are about the same as the burger or swift bullets.. I know how the sciroccos perform and was highly impressed by them but I could not get them to group very well out of my 300RUM they shot great out of my 300 win mag thuogh. and the sciroccos dont perform well at slower speeds. I am hoping that the 177GS work better than the 173's and have better trojectory even if the published BC's are close they should work great...And i am keeping my fingers crossed since I have already bought them so I will atleast give them a try..

I am curious James if when shooting the 173"s if you were able to calculate the true BC of the bullets just to see how far off the published numbers were if you have that info that would be great thanks

Tony,

This was our process and this is what we discovered.....

We purchased a significant quantity of the GS bullets and develped loading data.

We then adjusted our impact points at 100 based on the BCs from the website in 2004/2005 to achieve a 400 yard zero.

Needless to say we were very suprised when the impacts were not even close to the aiming point..... Specifically, they were flying about a foot low and not hitting the target....

We then adjusted it for the zero at 400 yards and then commenced the accuracy testing at 400.

We shot two shots and packed up the gear and went home.

Next day at exactly the same time we shot another shot into the target using the same aiming point.

We did that the next three days until we had 6 shots on target..... The group measured 3/8" and we were ecstatic about the grouping of the bullets and we immediatley contacted GS and let them use our testimony on their website and they did for about 4 years.

The next step was to develop the drop charts for the bullet and that is where it went sour. Again, the bullets were under-flying the targets when using the BC data from the GS website. Once we got the scope tweaked, the rounds were impacting very close together and we continued this from 500 out to 900 yards.

We noticed that the flight characteristics of the bullets seemed poor and much worse that the Nosler 180 grain Accubonds that we had already tested.

We conducted some BC testing over the chronograph and that data is what uncovered the mystery..... The BCs were in the low .3s and when we reverse calculated the drops we saw, the drops matched the chronograph data. We felt like idiots for spending that kind of money on bullets that were inferior ballistically to the Noslers.... I had to hide the bullets under the desk to keep from getting sick every time I saw them.

We contacted Gerard and did not get any response from him.... I went to the website to show one of my shooting buddies the data and the BCs had been removed from the website without any explanation or correspondence explaining the details of what was happening.

I never heard from Gerard again until this year when I noticed he was on the forums.

Based on the information I got from him about returning products and legalities in the shipping of bullets in Zambia, it seems as though one cannot return them using a shipper that has real time tracking and legitimate delivery confirmation.... With that being the case, it is just too much of a mire for me to even think about trying the new ones and I hope that no one has to go through the wasted expense that I have with this company.

Not much customer service and they were not even considering refunding or making the order good.... Their action was to ignore correspondence. I did get several notices from the office personnel that the additional order that I had made was ready, but nothing about standing behind the products that did not even come close to the claimed performance that was printed on the website. Nothing from Gerard at all. The silence was deafening.

We also tested the Lost River bullets and they were accurate as the GS customs and they had great flight characteristics.... Unfortunately they did not expand properly. Lost River refunded my money for the entire order and I shipped the products back to them..... They called me a short time later and they sent me another order and I tested them as well and they still did not expand properly... Lastly, they sent me some experimental poly-tipped ones to try and I must say that I did not want to shoot another animal suspecting improper expansion so I did not test those. Now since they are not in business, I guess it is good that we stuck with the Noslers until the HATS came along.....


Some folks think that I am on this because of the HATS and that is not the case..... I just don't want anyone to get fooled and waste a lot of resources looking for the holy grail and wind up in the same boat as I. They (GS customs) have had ample time to take the high road and they chose not to do it.

Anyway, I was doing some spring cleaning today and found some bullets that I did not realize that I had on hand so I did an inventory of all the bullets that I have that were still sealed in their original containers. In the interest of full disclosure here are the results.

(5000) Berger 6mm 105s

(3000) Sierra 107s

(1000) JLK 70s

(2000) Brawand 63s

(1400) Messer 52s

(500) Berger 65s

(1500) Noslers in various calibers and weights

(300) HATS in various calibers and weights

(300+) GS custom bullets

(1500) Sierras (non 6mm)

(475 +or-) Lost River bullets

(1000) Lapua 6mms

(600) Swift Sciroccos

Again, the above are the bullets that are sealed. The bullets that are not sealed are listed below and are from the below companies:

Wildcat
Sierra
Berger
Barts
Messer
Lapua
Johnson
Watson
Speer
Hornady
JLK

I supect that I have over 20,000 projectiles ready for field use. As you can see, I am not single-minded when it comes to bullet selection and use. Each and every one that I have has its place. I have spent a lot of time and money looking for the holy grail of bullets for different applications and some of the above fit that bill and some don't. However, every application that I have is covered by one of the above entries (except for Lost River and GS customs).

Finally, when pushing the envelope in search of the leading edge or an advantage it gets expensive and time consuming.

Good luck, good shooting and have a nice day.

James

 

[Gerard Schultz]

James,

You are of course free to hold any opinion you like. No problem with that. However, I feel compelled to point out that, for someone who is accusing me of fraud and blatant dishonesty to make a quick buck, you are telling an awful lot of lies.

In fairness, I realise that GSC is not your flavour of the month and that you may feel that exaggerating is the way to get your point across, so I am asking that you go over what you have said and correct those things you have said that are untrue, before I continue.

It will be to all our advantage if we remain factual and less emotional.

 

[Len Backus]

I am closing this thread until I have a chance to communicate with Lightvarmint and Gerard Schultz.