Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Bad bullets???????

Today I was shooting the .270 Win I bought from CAS on paper again. A few days ago I was nearly out of bullets so I bought a couple of boxes of my staple, Horn 130 gr spire point interlocks. The last time I shot the rifle on paper was nearly two weeks ago. This bullet was averaging around .75� with RL 22 and H4831. No matter what charge or seating depth groups never exceeded 1� and that includes 16 groups. Today it was tough to get the same loads under 2� and the groups were as erratic as 2" groups could possibly be. The first thing I do is rip the scope but get the same results with the replacement. The only difference between today and the last time was a new box of bullets that I used for over 10 groups shot today. Luckily I had a few bullets left over from the old box that I had used the last time so I loaded six and the two three shot groups were both under an inch. Its the new box of bullets. I�ve never seen such a dramatic lot to lot change from the same bullet. I�ve tried both powders and various seating depths, neither helped much. This new lot simply doesn't shoot in this rifle.

Has anyone ever seen such as this? I�ve not and I�ve shot a BUNCH of Horn 130 spire points.

Send them back to Hornady with the before and after targets.
Got some bad Noslers Btips once and they relpaced them.
-Doc-

I had the same thing happen using Sierra 150 grain Match bullets out of a 7mm Remington mag. Luckly, I did not start adjusting the scope, checking the reciever screws, checking the mounts. I still had 8 loaded rounds out of another box of Sierra bullets in the trunk of the car. I loaded 4 of the old bullets = accuracy back to normal. Four shots with the new bullets= accuracy trashed. I ended up giving the rest of the bullets to a friend who reloads in PA. He called a couple of weeks later and told me to never give him bullets again!!! He had the same experience with them I did. Looking back I wish I had sent them back to Sierra to see what they thought might be the problem.

It might not be the bullet-maker's fault, either. It doesn't take much handling abuse to make lead-cored bullets shoot badly, and that happens more than we'd like to know when a store or distributor orders one or more pallets of bullets.

I have proven this to myself by testing bullets dropped frokmvarious heights, whether in the boxes or individually. This showed up both on the Juenke bullet-concentricity machine and on targets.

John Barsness

I bought 5 boxes of 100, all with the same lot number. I've only opened one of the boxes. Are the odds that all five boxes are bad? Should I open another box and give them a whirl? I'll call Hornady tomorrow and my guess is that they have me return them all.

I just tried 140 Accubonds for the first time and the only two groups shot were both a tad under .75". I'm just proud its the bullets!!!