FYI, check your factory ammo

[CanardNoir]

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..."

And I forgot to mention a good Kestrel when trying to make a real long-range shot above sea level...

Also - the old saw: "You get what you pay for, or sometimes a little-bit less."

 

[tony d willIiams]

That is another reason I reload. I test after reloading to ensure the results follow the results from my earlier reloads.
I was trying to use factory ammo to set the scope on my last purchased rifle. I was doubting my abilities as I was lucky to consistently even hit paper at 440 yards.
Put in reloads, and 8" groups appeared.

 

[MagnumManiac]

I've never even thought about buying ammo to break in a new barrel

This was never my forte either.
Recently, this changed.
When I bought my Rem 700 SPS Stainless, no one had dies in stock and then I found a Lee set. Had all sorts of trouble, so I went to my LGS and looked for factory ammo.
They had Barnes 165g TTSX, 1 box had a different Lot#, but I grabbed all 3 boxes. I was very impressed, extremely accurate, for factory ammo, and was within 30fps of advertised. Great, hunted and ran the barrel in with that. When I went to get more, there was none, but there was Barnes 180g TTSX on the shelf, 10 boxes with all the same Lot#. I bought 5 boxes, not cheap either, over $100AUD each.
Very accurate, put 10 shots into MoA @ 100, however, the box said 3250fps, those 10 shots averaged 3030fps, these rounds were randomly taken from all 5 boxes. 2 from each.
I have not hunted with factory ammo since the 80's, this was a pleasant surprise TBH, the factory stuff I ran back then was doing good when it printed 2" groups.

Cheers.

 

[Victor3Ranger1]

Factory ammo needs to be chronographed at a minimum.
What amazes me is even if you duplicate load data and rifle for a particular load which is supposed to be xxxxfps and you run it through a chronograph and find the load is actually 200-350fps slower than the manual says
So far I have not seen a manual really close to true readings.

 

[cabelasken]

I once ordered a box of 300 WSM 180 Gr loads and one turned out to be a .284 bullet.

 

[Roadrunner2]

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

I shoot immediately after placing the warm ammo in my cold rifle (like within about 60-90 seconds). There is no affect on accuracy. But I agree that if I left the ammo in the rifle for more than a few minutes (depending upon ambient temperature) then it would be affected by the cold.

 

[lachoneus]

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!!

I have had the opposite problem. I once bought a used rifle in 7 mm mag and bought some cheap PMC ammo to function test it. The first round I shot seemed to recoil much harder than normal. So I decided to chronograph the load. The next shot was 400+ FPS over the velocity listed on the box. I stopped shooting at that point. Moral of the story: ALWAYS check your factory ammo!