FYI, check your factory ammo

I've found that some factory ammo is EXTREMELY temperature sensitive; like 300-400 fps over 40-50 degrees. The factory ammo that I hunt with shoots very well but I have to carry it inside my jacket at all times to maintain a reliable temperature. That does of course place certain constraints on my hunting style. I guess that the moral is to know your equipment and it's limitations.
 
So hopefully many/most of you have tested your chosen factory ammo extensively and know exactly what you have. I personally never or very rarely shoot factory ammo, but did so yesterday for barrel break-in on a new rifle. Didn't want to waste my good components cleaning a barrel up, so I bought some ammo at an Academy Sports locally to do the break-in with. I set up my radar on the bench and started shooting. This was an eye-opening experience. These were Remington's Tipped Core-Lokts for the 243 Winchester. If I had bought these to hunt out to 500 yards or beyond, I would have been very angry. Check out the discrepancy between the reported velocity printed on the box and that measured by the raday. That's a LARGE discrepancy!!
First off. What? I just me I read. Was that you use this ammo for barrel breaking? Correct, if that's what you're telling me second off. You're never gonna get max speed out of that ammo coming out of the box and tell you what about a 100. 150 rounds down the barrelfor the break in, it will speed up over time.
 
I've found that some factory ammo is EXTREMELY temperature sensitive; like 300-400 fps over 40-50 degrees. The factory ammo that I hunt with shoots very well but I have to carry it inside my jacket at all times to maintain a reliable temperature. That does of course place certain constraints on my hunting style. I guess that the moral is to know your equipment and it's limitations.

What is the effect on the performance when that warm ammo is placed into a rifle that may be zero F?

If the shot is taken almost immediately……likely nothing! If for whatever reason…. I see things starting to be affected! JMO. memtb
 
As long as they're not shooting distance, they're fine, but if you shoot at 100 thinking you're going to hit at 500 and beyond it's not logical. An acquaintance of mine who has since past was shooting long range in Colorado for elk beginning in the fifties. They used their scopes to judge distance and had practiced here in Oklahoma shooting rocks out to 700 yards with factory rifles. They were quite proficient. When I first heard about these guys, I said they were liars, no one could shoot 700 yards at an animal, but after spending time with some of the guys that hunted with them over the years, and especially as equipment improved, and technology advanced, range finders, dial up scopes, I found out targets including animals could be hit reliably at distance given the right circumstances. If you're shooting 100 yards more power to you, but this is a long-range forum.
I'm not saying it's logical, just saying that people do it and trust box velocities.
 
A couple of years ago, I bought a box of that same ammo, Remington Tipped Core-Lokt, for my 6.5 Creedmoor from Scheels online. I tried it and was shocked at how well it shot. It put 5 rounds in the same hole at 100 yards. I was able to repeat that a couple of times. With that performance, and the price per box, I wasn't even going to handload for the rifle. Later, I went to my local Scheels and bought 5 boxes of it. I went to the range and it was printing all over the target. Literally 1.5-2" groups. I probably shot 30 rounds during a couple of range trips and the precision was horrible. I started looking at the bullets and saw that some rounds had 'gold' colored primers and some had 'silver' colored primers! I sorted the rounds by primers and what do you know, the gold primer rounds shot well and the silver primer rounds were garbage. The only thing I can think of is Remington Ammo must have purchased whatever primers they could find during Covid and built rounds with them. I have lost faith in Remington ammo from now on. Who knows what other shenanigans they are pulling.
I'm also 99.99% sure that the Tipped Core-Lokts are Hornady SSTs with a green tip on them. I pulled some, measured, weighed and cut them open and they look the same to me.
 
Furthering this analysis of factory ammo…I've rarely purchased or shot "premium" factory ammo at all, just various budget soft point loads before I got into handloading when I was 18. But I still had a fair bit of factory ammo left when I got into it, and decided to test what I had over the chronograph and on targets just for curiosity's sake.

Where I live, at the time, the big three budget soft point lines were Winchester Super X power points, Federal blue box power shock, and Remington corlokt. Nowadays add hornady American whitetail with interlock bullets to that mix, we sell a ton of it and in some cases it's cheaper than the others even.


My findings from all four of those lines were that


1. Winchester ammo was consistently the truest to advertised velocity, no contest, even exceeding it in more than one loading. I chronographed their 150 grain .300 win mag soft point at 3330 feet per second out of a 24 inch vanguard barrel. The .270 loads were almost exactly what the box said out of a 22 inch savage. The .243 load was over 2900 fps in the 22 inch savage 99 that is admittedly shot out a bit. Same gun that the Remington ammo was under 2700 in. Same bullet weight and advertised velocity. Winchester is loaded hottest and the power point bullet, regardless of bc and concentricity or lack thereof, hits very hard and holds together well enough.

Federal blue box - without question these have been the most accurate rounds in multiple rifles out of any factory ammo. Consistently right at or under 1 inch with a cheap early 2000s savage 111 package gun in .270 win with the 130 grain load. Chrono said 3000 fps. Box said 3060. When I consider that my gun is a 22 inch barrel, there's nothing wrong with that at all, it's about right. Very consistent velocity too. The downside of this ammo for me is the brass haha, but if you're not a handloader it don't matter. But federal brass in my experience has less internal volume WHILE being some of the softest brass out there. Fine for target loads, junk to the would-be hot-rodder 😁

Hornady - my experience was not so good, this was back when it was called "custom"
And not "American whitetail" but it was the 140 grain interlock 270 load. It shot decently enough, had the tightest es numbers of any of these…it was notably slower than advertised but within the range of forgiveability I suppose. But the brass itself caused problems, it's the only time I've had factory ammo be so tight to chamber that it was hard
To close the bolt, and even after resizing spent cases, they were snug in a way that is no good for real world hunting when you want to count on being able to make as fast a follow up as possible should you need to.

Remington! Ahhhh, the bottom of the barrel. In multiple guns and chamberings, I have NEVER seen it get within 200 feet per second of what the box says it should. With ES numbers all over the place, and sub par accuracy to boot. My uncle experienced a total bullet failure with the cor lokt bullet as well (I know there's thousands of success stories, not saying otherwise), and not with a high speed light bullet - a 180 grain out of a .308 win. On a spike buck. Shoulder hit somehow caused it to fragment so violently that the majority of the bullet didn't get past the shoulder joint, just a few fragments managing to pop a lung and they did find it and finish the job after tracking over a mile. The whole front end was a mess of copper and led fragments in hamburger. Not good. Has since switched to Winchester super x and never had a problem since.

Some notable mentions; federal fusion: this ammo was about 150 feet per second slower than advertised, but very accurate and consistent and that bullets performance in water jug testing (not live game I know) was just amazing to be honest. Really opens up. Really holds together.

Finally, the federal "trophy copper" load. Against all expectations this is actually the single most accurate factory load i have ever tried in that old shot out savage 99 243. 85 grain trophy copper. Just dead nuts accurate, right under an inch which is impressive out of that pencil barreled throat-shot-out two piece stock rear locking lever action haha. Better than it does with anything else except one handload it still likes, with the cheap 100 grain Speer btsp of all things.
 
Nothing to "blame". They have their test barrels and he has his rifle. Not unusual for a rifle to be over or under the published data on factory ammo. It is just a fact that he will not got the same results as the factory published.

Do you blame the manufacturer of your vehicle when you do not get the same gas mileage that was on the window sticker when you bought it?
F-O-U-R H-U-N-D-R-E-D Ft/S!!!!! If my Toyota Camry got 10mpg dadgum right I blame Toyota!!🤣🤣🤣
 
A couple of years ago, I bought a box of that same ammo, Remington Tipped Core-Lokt, for my 6.5 Creedmoor from Scheels online. I tried it and was shocked at how well it shot. It put 5 rounds in the same hole at 100 yards. I was able to repeat that a couple of times. With that performance, and the price per box, I wasn't even going to handload for the rifle. Later, I went to my local Scheels and bought 5 boxes of it. I went to the range and it was printing all over the target. Literally 1.5-2" groups. I probably shot 30 rounds during a couple of range trips and the precision was horrible. I started looking at the bullets and saw that some rounds had 'gold' colored primers and some had 'silver' colored primers! I sorted the rounds by primers and what do you know, the gold primer rounds shot well and the silver primer rounds were garbage. The only thing I can think of is Remington Ammo must have purchased whatever primers they could find during Covid and built rounds with them. I have lost faith in Remington ammo from now on. Who knows what other shenanigans they are pulling.
I'm also 99.99% sure that the Tipped Core-Lokts are Hornady SSTs with a green tip on them. I pulled some, measured, weighed and cut them open and they look the same to me.
Very good info. Thanks for that! Yes, my grouping was fine for my application and only slightly lower on the target that POI of my handloads. Handloads, incidentally ranged from around 2850 through 3212 using 4 different bullets and 4 different powders all ignited by Federal 210 Gold Medal Match primers in Peterson cases. 90 grain Hammer HHTs, 95gr Ballistic Tips, 100gr Sierra ProHunters, and 100gr Sierra GameKings.
 
Why are you breaking in your barrel?
Because it's a factory barrel and they are historically pretty rough inside vs custom/aftermarkets. Didn't think a little ironing out of the tooling marks would hurt when I wanted to test loads for the rifle's accuracy potential.

To your point, however, this barrel was pretty decent and showed very little fouling from copper during the process. Kudos to Remington on their new 700 Alpha 1 Hunter. Now if they get the ammo straightened out, they'll be in business!
 
So hopefully many/most of you have tested your chosen factory ammo extensively and know exactly what you have. I personally never or very rarely shoot factory ammo, but did so yesterday for barrel break-in on a new rifle. Didn't want to waste my good components cleaning a barrel up, so I bought some ammo at an Academy Sports locally to do the break-in with. I set up my radar on the bench and started shooting. This was an eye-opening experience. These were Remington's Tipped Core-Lokts for the 243 Winchester. If I had bought these to hunt out to 500 yards or beyond, I would have been very angry. Check out the discrepancy between the reported velocity printed on the box and that measured by the raday. That's a LARGE discrepancy!!
First - understand that liability concerns have affected all factory ammo producers as their lawyers have moved them to err on the side of safety.

Second - newer shooter sometimes don;t understand that on-the-box printed ballistics were the product of 24" barrels of a make and model far different from their own; and older shooters often need to be reminded.

Third - those who have been moved to reloading, now rely on actual velocities with chronographs, like the Garmin shown - plus we use powders that are not dictated by manufacturing cost (or availability, because we sometimes hoard).

And lastly - some shooters totally disregard the laws of physics and their affects on terminal ballistics.

To your point - short barrels - those less than 24' - don't produce anything near the published ballistic performance on the box! And compounding that problem is the fact that some of us still can't accurately estimate distances and often don't have the immediate-time to use a rangefinder. So our shots are not accurate, nor could they ever be.

The 100-200 yard shots we routinely make in the whitetail-deer woods are chip shots, when we venture out West. And to quote my late-guide from Wyoming, 'Wa' Dunbar - "...this is Big Country..."
 
I don't find ~125 fps discrepancy odd at all. I had at one time 5 different 308s. The difference across all 5 was 175 fps even after accounting for barrel length. There are fast barrels and slow barrels. I had 1 20 inch barreled 308 exceed mfg spec by 75 fps and the mfg specs were for a 24 inch barrel.

A very affluent friend of mind bought I believe it was 5 270s of the same model at one time and velocity tests with same ammo varied by 150 fps.
 
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Because it's a factory barrel and they are historically pretty rough inside vs custom/aftermarkets. Didn't think a little ironing out of the tooling marks would hurt when I wanted to test loads for the rifle's accuracy potential.

We all do things differently and probably for good reason. I've never even thought about buying ammo to break in a new barrel.

I've been reloading for more decades than I care to admit. I have many boxes of odds-n-ends bullets that I'd like to get rid of. I also have plenty of brass that is nearing it's end. Add to that all the partial cans of powder that I no longer use and I have all the components needed to build "fouling loads". They could just as well be used to break in a new barrel.

I'm not criticizing the use of factory ammo for break in. I just never gave that a thought.

And you are correct in suggesting that a 400fps discrepancy is extreme. There is no justification (IMO) for that to occur. Even a 16' bbl shouldn't cause such a drop in velocity. I agree with the others that said you should contact Remington with your findings and return the balance if they want it. They probably won't. LOL
 
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