I have a lot of factory ammo that my late father bought years ago .Most is probably from the 70s,and early 80s..I have a lot of Remington pointed soft point for 250 Savage,some boxes are Remington Express,and a few are Remington High Velocity.They look the same,so I'm pretty sure the are the same load.These shoot great from my old 99,but I don't have a chrono,and I wonder if they are still as potent as when new.How old does ammo have to be before it goes down hill?,and I've also noticed that the older boxes say that these are more of a varmit bullet.Are these also a pretty good whitetail bullet? ,or shoul I just stick with my hand loads?

It sounds like you have a variety of cartridges there as the Remington Express was actually what they called the 280 Remington for a short while which is different to the 250 Savage mentioned.
The ammo will perform the same as new ammk if it has been stored in a home.

I should have been more clear.They are all 250 Savage 100gr.The difference is the newer looking boxes say Express Rifle,and the older ones boxes say High velocity ..The ammo has all been properly stored,and looks nice, I wouldn't have even thought twice about it's potency,execpt that I saw a thread a few weeks ago where someone says they chrono tested some old ammo,and it ran really,really slow.

a few shots over a chrono would answer that question John..

and if you are using the ammo for hunting, in the real world, doubt if the velocity, high or low would make much difference at 200 yds or under, the distance in which 99 % of all game is taken..

Ammunition lasts a long time if it is stored under reasonable conditions. I have shot quite a bit of surplus military ammo that is much older than your .250 stuff and it was still as good as new.

Some REALLY old ammo will produce misfires or hangfires. I have seen some old World War One stuff do that, but your ammo should be fine.

The first ammo that I shot in my then new .30-06 over 50 years ago were Remington PSPs. I don't remember what weight they were but I suspect that they were 150s. I killed a few small Texas whitetails with them and they seemed to work just fine at the time. I would be hesitant to use them on deer in areas where live weights consistently ran in excess of 150 lbs, but that's just me. They might kill larger deer just as well with properly placed shots.

I have four boxes of .35 Remington with the "High Velocity" banner on the box that I found in a hardware store in Colorado a couple of weeks ago. I recently received a Marlin 336 SC as a gift and was looking for brass and/or ammo. One box had a price sticker that said $8.95, while the others were all marked $9.95. The proprietor said that he had a bag with some more that I could have. He went to the back and returned with a zip-loc bag containing 22 rounds of Remington factory ammunition. The brass cases were all discolored and a thick white fuzz had sprouted on the exposed lead on the bullet tips. As soon as I get caught up on domestic chores, I intend to shoot some of both and chronograph a few rounds just to see if there is any deterioration in performance.

If you are already shooting hand loads, I would just stick with those and sell the factory stuff. There is nothing wrong with the ammo you showed, there is ammunition over 70 years old that is still shooting fine today.

You will usually find that your hand loads and the factory won't shoot the same POI so it is just better to stick with what works and sell the rest...

I was just shooting hand loads,and was very satisified with my deer loads of 100gr Speer Hot-cor over 40gr of H4350.It stabilized these bullets,and shot about 2" groups.I don't have a chrono,but I guess they were about 2,900 FPS.My lever was just slightly sticky on extraction as in it required a quick jerk to open it.I wasn't to worried about it but I posted in the Savage section yesterday asking if it was a normal comprimise of FPS vs ease of extraction,and everyone seemed to think I was too hot.The factory Remington PSPs seem to group nearly as well as my 87s,and must be a real short bullet because they are only 2.44 OAL,I figured instead of cooling down my load for 100s I'd just shoot the factory stuff .They are my lifetime source for brass so I wouldn't want to sell them.

Deere, I would not sell them in today's brass availability climate. Muddy

Sigh....

We now live in an era when people think of ammo from the 70's-80's to be "old". I (being 61) think of that stuff as being pretty fresh, and old ammo would have to pre-date WWII before I questioned its serviceability.

Keeping it at least for the brass would be really smart. Have you tried shopping for .250 Savage stuff recently?

I have some 300H&H Winchester Silvertips from the 50's, it goes bang just fine. As long as it was stored well, it should last a very long time. If the cases are clean and not corroded I would feel fine using it.

Ammo from the 80's isn't old.

Please repost again in 40 years, and then we can discuss you middle aged ammo.

I have shotgun ammo older than that I shoot now and again. It works just fine.

Other than .22 RF ammo I haven't shot a factory CF rifle load in decades, and that was only a few rounds. Bought my first press in 1970 and never looked back.

Today is first day anterless season her in West Virginia,so I shot a nice big doe about an hour ago with the factory ammo.I shot it in the neck,and it died instantly,but didn't exit.I just got it hung,and gutted,and I'll skin it later tonight,or in the morning,and post a photo of the damage.The fact that it didnt exit has me a little baffled.I shot a slightly smaller one with my hand loads thru the neck,and blowed a good size chunk out of it on the exit.

Nice one, I know what you mean by no exit, but dead is dead and no meat damage..

I just skinned it and the bullet went into the right shoulder area.I might find it when I cut it up. .This is the side I shot it on

I cut it up this morning,and got a good look at the wound.I didnt actually enter the shoulder. It's mostly just real bloody,and jellied under the membrane .The bullet traveled almost directly down the necks spine,and stopped about where the right shoulder,and back strap meet I found copper,but no lead.It's there somewhere,but I aint gonna look too hard for it .I'm not very pleased with the way the bullet shedding it's jacket,but I'll probably stick with them for the rest of the year.I'll be switching to my old 270 for buck season anyways.

The bullet didn't perform as badly as I thought,it didn't blow apart, it was just loosing the shards along it's path of destruction. It was my fault for not getting the right angle on my shot,and I cost me a little back strap (I always call it tender loin,but I know it's not),but not too much.I found this channel in the back strap,you can see one more small fragment of copper,and right past it I dug out the rest of the bullet that was still intact.

3 or 4 years ago, I inherited several bandoleers of 30-06 ball ammo from the Frankfort Arsenal, dated 1938, 70+ years old. Most of it was in pristine condition, possible never opened. We shot a bunch of it with no failures, and accuracy was fine out of an 03 and 700. We did clean the rifles pretty thoroughly afterwards. I still have a few left.

I've got a bunch of circa 1937 Kynoch 7x57 Mauser that was sealed up in a thousand round spam can and unopened until 2012. The stuff looks like it was made yesterday and this past summer I just had to chrono some because it all goes bang and is pretty accurate out of an old 1908 Brazilian Mauser with visible wear in the barrel. It averaged 2877 fps (140 gr. bullet) with an extreme spread of 51.7 fps at 68 degrees F..So I imagine that under proper storage conditions most any well made ammo is gonna last a lot longer than we usually think.

After hearing all of your opinions I feel pretty confident in the ammo.I never really even thought about it going down hill with age till I seen this thread a while back,and then I wasn't worried because I was just saving them for future brass http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/9209204/1 .I knew that it still functioned well shooting paper.In fact it groups better than what I was loading,but I didn't want to hunt with it if it was running so slow that it wouldn't produce quick kills.