Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Old ammo reliability

I have a stash of old Remington .350 Rem Mag ammo that I'm starting to wonder about. Purchased in 1988, 250 grain factory load, green and yellow box. Pretty sure it was made before 1985, don't know when they discontinued the 250 gr load, but its not the older green and white boxes. I did shoot a few rounds 3 or 4 years ago and they were fine. Its been stored indoors, but may have been in an unconditioned garage for a few years. Would you trust it for hunting at this stage?

I'm looking for the part about "old ammo" in the OP?

1988 isn't old.

I'm shooting some Turkish 8mm from the 1930. That qualifies as "old". No issues with it to date.

Ran across some "old" Winchester 270 130gr PP I bought in the 60'sa couple of years ago. When I fired it the recoil seemed mild. Checked to be sure the bullet cleared the barrel - it had. Chronoed some and it averaged about 2700 fps. All of it did go bang. 1988 vintage ammo should still be good but I would chrono it just to be sure of POI.

SIL shot some of these off a few weeks ago. Don't know how old they are but they were
given to me along with my uncles 1953 pre-64 M94.

to bad she shot some, could have sold to a collector and bought a new 94 ..............almost!

Son-in-law shot them. Was a full box to. I tried a good while back to sell them here but no takers.

Like others have said, 1988 is not "old". As long as there's no sign of corrosion or otherwise compromised cases or primers, shoot it, hunt with it, whatever...

I've got a full box of 100gr .270 loads in the same style packaging. Think they're worth auctioning off?

Also have two full boxes of Remmy .22 shorts in the all green box with red stripe. Guess I'd best get on GB and look around.

In 2009 I was prepping for a Moose hunt and a friend gave me a Green/White with red letters box of Remington 30-06 220 grain Core Lokts. I shot a few at the range and everything went well so I took them Moose hunting. They gave me an exit wound on a broadside Cow at 75 yards. She ran a hundred yards and collapsed.

1988 old? Hardly go shoot it and have no worries. I'm shooting 30/06 ammo made in Greece in the late 40's that fires fine.

I have fired a lot of old ammo. Argentine from the 20's, german with the swastiga markings from 1938, and so on.
The argentine had hard primers and sometimes you have to wait a little bit before it goes boom. I have also fired german 8mm in a mg42 made in the 30's with no issue.
Best story about this is some years ago running across about 15000rounds of french m2ball stored in a garage in phoenix since the 50's. This was subject to the summer heat. The brass was no good same with primers, corrosive and brittle brass but powder and bullets were pulled and reloaded in new brass. Fired over a chrony there was only about 10fps variation in five round strings. Worked just fine.
I have a box of spencer ammo for a spencer from the civil war period. Have been tempted many times to fire a round to see if it works, except for messing up the unopened box.
I have shot a lot of the m2ball 30.06 from greece, and denmark, and the early 50's production from our arsonels, no problem

We have some .303 British from the Clavine Armory (spelling?) head stamped 1898.

Functions fine in the Bren guns, as well as the enfield no1 mkii, no4 mki, and no 5 Jungle carbines.

As stated in a previous post, sometimes there's a "click....boom" aspect, but only about 1 in 50 is a FTF.

He PURCHASED the ammo in '88 but states he's sure it was loaded before then. That said, I'm relatively sure the 250's went the way of the dinosaur in the '70s, not that that's "old" either. I have several boxes of 250s and 200s in the old green/white boxes and they shoot fine. Just this weekend I shot some 100gr 6.5 Mag in the old boxes and they were discontinued in '71 if memory serves. I actually get a kick out of killin' game with ammo older than I am. I squirrel hunted this past season with some old paper 16ga shells that were probably loaded in the '50s and they went bang just like they were loaded yesterday.

Most times it will be fine. Most times...



Not old, nor a reload, Hornady 300 factory ammo bought in 2014.

Ted

I recently fired a 20 round box of FA 30-06 ammo dated 1928. All fired perfectly and the only thing I noticed was the different smell from the corrosive primers.

Then home to clean my 1903.

That smell wasn't from the corrosive primers. It was from the IMR 1185 or IMR 17 powder used to load Ball ammo back then.

I scarf up all the Frankford Arsenal Cal. .30 Ball ammo I can find from the late 20's-30's. It is wonderful stuff and the brass is great- lasts forever and very consistent dimensionally. From the color of the brass I'm guessing it has a slightly higher copper content than what we are used to today.

Mike, you do know that rule 1 with an old muzzle loader is to make damn sure it isn,t loaded. 200 year old dry powder will burn! Muddy

Sure - but there's a difference between "burn" and perform somewhere near original spec and be reliable on big game.
Well, will probably put it up for sale sometime anyway. Unless something changes, really don't have a need for a .350 RemMag, much less 250 gr loads. Held onto it this long (Rem 700 Classic bought in 1985) because its just about the most consistently accurate rifles I've ever used.

I think it all depends upon how it's been stored. I grew up in a very humid place, Mississippi, in a house with no air conditioning or central heat and I can remember a box of remington 30-30 ammo that misfired with half the rounds when I shot them. They'd been stored in a cupboard in the kitchen for 10 years or so. It was stifling hot and humid in that house during the summer and I'm sure that contributed to the ammo going bad.

While there is lots of good information in the above posts, the question is why would you want to depend on the reliability of old ammo? When winning the match or downing the buck recently purchased factory ammo or fresh reloads should be what is used if reliability is required. I have shot old ammo, always for plinking and have experienced failures to fire, split necks, pierced primers and other problems related to embrittlement of the metal due to age. I leave old ammo for collectors, don't feel the need to experience the problems related also clean-up after firing corossive ammo is something I can live without.