Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire rate the brass?

i have quanties of 30-06 WW, Fed, RP, and some Hornady, sufficient amounts I can use any of it - I think all of it once fired. It may end up several firings eventually. 2 different 06 rifles, so I may customize a bit using different brands, depending on chambers and what they like, if different These are hunting tools.

I prefer to just touch the shoulder of brass when reloading for the same rifle.

rate best to worst in your experience . I need to cutdown on brand proliferation!

Havent reloaded in 15 years, or so, but need to standardize.. and get back into it. You know why!

I always liked Winchester and Federal.


I would never get rid of brass however.

Unless I intended to shoot competitively, I’d load them all indiscriminately.

Well different runs of brass is going to be of different quality in those brands. I have has some truly soft Federal brass and some poorly made Remington brass. I have also had some crap Hornady brass in 6.5 Grendel. That said all of those brands can be of good enough quality for most purposes.

WW
Fed
RP
I have no specific reason for me bias. Just like them in that order.
RP - Good
Fed - Better
WW - Best of the 3

I noticed Federal primer pockets become loose quicker than others.

That has been my experience as well, I won't go out of my way for FC brass.

My favorite, and used over and over and over, was LC 57. But that did not make your list.

I always had enough LC around that I gave away any commercial brass I came across.

Gojoe;
Good afternoon to you, I hope the day's behaving itself and you're well.

Thanks to you and duke61 for confirming my recollections on Federal, I was going to type that too but couldn't recall exactly why it was at the bottom of las' list.

To be clear I've not bought new brass in at least a decade - we had a real drought of product up here in the early Obama years and when the supply started up again there were a few of us that "overcompensated" a wee bit.

So then with it clear that none of my info is on recent stuff, it'd be WW, Hornady, RP and Federal in that order.

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

WW all the way.

Not Hornady.

Not necessarily for hunting...but for longevity & consistincy

Lapua

Norma

Hornady

LC

Starline (have only ever used their straight walled pistol brass)

Win

If these truly are hunting tools - I wouldn't worry about the head stamp. You have them on hand. Group them by head stamp. Keep them separated by the rifle you choose. Reload them a couple of times - and toss them. Nothing you have is worth making a lot of fuss over.

Having said that, it has also been my experience that Federal and Hornady brass will loosen up in the primer pockets before Win and R-P. However, if you are not going to anneal the necks, that should not matter.

RP
Hornady
WW
Federal in that order.
All will need prep work. YMMV

Older WW good , new junk
RP
Fed
Hornady junk
Buying new it’s Lapua , ADG , Prvi Partizian , Peterson , Norma. I don’t buy rifles that I can’t get Lapua or ADG for anymore.

I'd add Alpha to the premium group

I mostly agree, but would add..

Hornady is junk when it comes to weight variation, as it’s all over the place - but actually holds up ok. The primer pockets last longer than Federal, which is junk after 1-2 firings.

Starline brass is actually pretty good also.