Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Shelf Life of Factory Ammunition

Guys:

A friend recently gifted me with four unopened boxes of Federal Premium cartridges in .270 Win. (P270E - 150gr Nosler Partition bullet) They may be anywhere from 10-20 years old. There are no blemishes on either the cartridges or boxes. They were stored by his reloading bench in a dry basement here in Northern MI.

What is the shelf life of these loads? Would you use them for hunting, or just practice? Thanks.

NB

Indefinite.

As long as they were kept in those sorts of conditions, they are close to being new. I have stuff that has been stored for 30 years or more that is in great shape. Go ahead and hunt with it.

Agree 100%

The shelf life of ammunition is measured in decades. If not exposed to excess heat or corrosive conditions that ammo is as good as you could buy today.

Going off is one thing, but how about accuracy? Neck tension on the bullet doesn't start being variable from round to round after 10-20 years considering the flexing nature of brass? For average hunting range use they should be good for BG, but I wouldn't be using them for anything more than field position practice.

Spending good today dollars on a hunt, then using older than dirt ammo, just doesn't seem to add up to 1+1=2

Then there is some physical concept of two different metals-in this case brass and copper-when in long term contact initiating corrosion over time. Nope, I'm not hunting with it.

Heaven forbid you should just shoot the ammo and actually see if it is accurate.

Try it out and see how it shoots for accuracy and reliability. Bet it does fine. I've shot reloads that are 10+ years old, and they shoot just as accurately as the current bunch.

Heaven forbid the ones I shoot are and the ones I haven't are not.

I would think for average hunting there should be no problems. Then it comes down to if average is where you want to be.

Hunt with it.

THANKS for the getbacks, guys.

I have some new Fed Premium ammo w/ same loads so will head to the range and compare old vs new.

NB

Have, within the last 5 years, shot some WW1 45acp ammo without incident....

RE case neck tension, IF the ammo is stored where it can get really hot and really cold, read over 90 and probably under freezing is my guess, you could affect the tension issue but typically factory is new brass and new annealed and will be fine regardless.

Reloads though that have a few firings on the brass, stored in climate controlled areas have been fine... those in the garage that hits 120 or so in the summer I have lost large amounts of brass to splits on firing in the neck...

I have a tin of Lake City 55 grain .223/ 5.56 military ball date stamped 68. I targeted a sample a while back. In a mini-14, that load, factory Remington, and commercial reloads all did close to the same. The POI was a bit different with each, but not much difference in group size and all were acceptable. Jack

Well I am not that fussy going into my old age, I would not complain a bit if somebody just gave me four boxes of 7mm RM( your case 270) I would just smile, check zero, go hunt. Ammo last a very very very long time. When ammo is in sort supply like it is these days along with components for hand loading. Never bitch about getting something like four boxes of anything ammo wise. Gee its Christmas in June!!!!

Should be an interesting test. However, three things:

Tell me one thing, other than some completely inanimate object that is as good 10-20years down the road as it was in its prime. A loaded round is not what I would consider completely inanimate.

You walk into the store and you need some ammo right now for a hunt. There is a box that is 10 years old and another that is factory fresh. Which one you going to buy?

Lastly, I'll practice with it, but I'm not going to hunt with it.

When I was in the army, NATO had to move their ammo depot out of Charles DeGuale's France. It took truck loads going through the borders at Germany and Belgium every few minutes almost two years to clean out that one storage depot.

My point is the military is comfortable storing large amounts of ammo for a long time.

Isn't load density one of the factors to consider? I believe old compressed load .458 Win Mag ammo was/is problematic. I also had a couple of +25 year old Federal Premium .338 WM with 250gr Partitions that I tried a few months ago. The first load chronographed at +2900 FPS over a 35P! I checked the case and the neck was badly split. I pulled the other round and you could clearly see the heavy indentations the powder had made in the rear lead core. I don't know if it was a chronograph error on that one shot, but that plus the split neck was all I needed to see.

Granted the vast majority of factory ammo is not a compressed charge, so for most it should be a non-issue.

I hunted with ammo at least 70 years old and a 123 year old rifle
a little last year. Strangely, all worked as it should. Of course, i'm
sure I REALLY needed the latest plastic whiz bang belted magnum
12 power scoped something or other.....

No matter if I had new ammo or 20 yr old I'd still shoot confirm poi etc. if the old made shoots fine what would be the difference?

New off the shelf ammo, and components fail every year.

Not sure that buying new is just that much safer than old.

But in theory it should be.

Use it, FIL has ammo from when he purchased his pre 64 30-06 new and it works every year.