Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Winchester Wildcat ammo - old vs new

Does anybody have a read on the relative quality of the old, individually boxed Wildcat ammo vs the more recent bulk packed ammo?

I remember that people liked it back in the 90's, and I just assumed that Winchester did a bait-and-switch when they went to bulk.
I really don't.remember shooting any back then so I have no opinion.

I hoping that others do and can chime in.

Thanks all

The old Wildcat ammo was very good, at least the 3 or 4 cases I got at K-Mart back in the 80's. It was very accurate in my .22 pistols and rifles and I used it to win or place well in all the .22 rifle and Hunter Pistol silhouette matches I attended in the early to mid 90's.

Finally used it all up and bought some new Wildcat, this would have been maybe 9-10 years ago, and while IIRC it did function okay it wouldn't group worth a damn in anything I tried it in. After that one box I never bought any more.

Thanks Jim! That's exactly the kind of info I need.

Hopefully some others will be along to either support or refute your experience.

Same experience here. I've still got some boxes of the old Wildcat ammo from early 90's. Still functions perfectly and groups well. I've bought a few packs of the newer stuff, but nothing impressive, Just used it for plinking and honestly haven't bought anymore of the newer.

Well, then I'm going to keep some of what I have.
I had bought some 90's Thunderbolt, Wildcat and Hansen SV from an estate. Ive resold all of the Remington and most of the Winchester.
I held on to the 4 cases of Hansen because I remember it shooting well for me. I think ill keep 2 Win and 2 Hansen now.

The old Wildcats were our go-to ammo in the 70's and 80's. Great stuff, accurate and reliable. Some of you might remember the Wildcat Dynapoints in the 70's, the 'hollow point' that had a dimple in the nose.
They were quite effective and accounted for a LOT of woodchucks.

Refute my experience?!

Refute MY experience?!

Sir, I am the be all and end all of experience. My experience has decided cases in the Supreme Court. The 1996 Harvard and Yale debate teams lay broken, demoralized and near suicidal after trying to refute my experience.

Refute my experience. Hmmph, the very notion. You may as well try to refute the Laws of Physics!

My experience with Wildcats is identical to Jim's.

Same here, but with almost all of the Winchester ammo of late... used to use the Power Points almost exclusively and now I can't get them to group consistently at all from box to box since they switched manufacturing to stateside....

Bob

Mid to late 80's I was getting that in the 50 round boxes at a LGS cheap and got to like it a lot. I think it was a promotional gimmick to sell it and get folks to like it. Bought a bunch and it was a favorite for quite a while. Didn't see it around for a long time and finally started using CCI Blazer as the one all around general use stuff for several different rifles & pistols. The old Wildcats were accurate and reliable but nowadays I have no clue as to how they might be.

Consider me properly chastised, never to raise the outrageous and baseless spectre of refutation again.

I grew up on Wildcats in the 70s. It was my favorite as a kid, then I got hung up on Remington Yellow Jackets for awhile after they came out.

I still like the Wildcats, but hardly ever see them in AK.

I kept my last box of dynapoint Wildcats just because it was so accurate and kept plenty of squirrels in the freezer back in the 80's. Thankfully, my rifles shoot hp mini-mags just as well.

I keep trying Wildcats, hoping they went back to the ole recipe. Hasn't happened yet. I miss those days.

Well, guess I'll be the disenter. Bought a brick of Win Wildcat back in the early 80s. Functioned fine, but was the dirtiest burning .22 ammo I've seen. It was bad enough cleaning the rifle I had then (Rem 552) but made a mess of my Ruger Mk II pistol. Unburned powder and soot everywhere thru the action and down into the trigger group. Ended up completely disassembling and washing it out under hot water in the sink then drying in the oven. Gave most of the brick away.

It still is... I just use it for plinking and/or testing the function of a customer's rifle - but then it takes more time to clean up the fouling than other types of ammo.. I rarely use much of it any longer Most of mine is now Federal..

I thought Wildcat was always sorry ammo, but I just checked some notes from almost twenty years ago regarding some groups that I fired with Wildcat and many other .22 ammos. The old Wildcat did pretty well, with five, five-shot, 50 yard groups averaging .75" from a reproduction Browning / Winchester Model 52, exactly the same as it did with CCI Standard Velocity. The same ammos fired in 2018 in a Model 52 averaged 1.34" for Wildcat and .60" for CCI SV.

Win Wildcat was fine ammo in my 22 back in the 70’s and 80’s. Can’t speak to the 90’s and 2000’s. Bought a few bricks in 2010 or 11 and it wasn’t as accurate as I remember. Have not bought any since.

Win Power Point’s was my go to ammo for along time. The recent production isn’t near as good. Still have some older boxes and have shot it side by side in a pair of rifles that like it.

Tried a brick of Win T-22 (think that was the name). Results were so-so. I was hoping it would better because our Wally had a bunch priced cheap.

Bulk pack Win good for plinking. Ruger revolver likes it pretty well.

Win 22 Mag and 17HMR are terrible regarding recent purchases.

I pass on all Win rimfire lately. Have found better options comparatively priced when panic/hording subsides.

Changing the subject a bit, I recently bought a brick of Winchester Super-X, figuring that was ammo of decent quality. Well, it's not.

I've fired five boxes so far, 250 rounds, one box of 50 through a Glock G44 and the rest through a Ruger Mk IV Standard. That one box had three failures to feed in the G44, while the CCI AR Tactical it usually gets has been 100% free of problems.

Went to the range yesterday and put 100 rounds through the Ruger and the variation in the ammo was very noticeable. One round failed to fire with a good primer strike but after turning it 180 degrees it did fire, but the most noticeable thing was that once in every 10-15 rounds a round would have a very weak report and much softer recoil. Obviously had a lesser powder charge then the others.

Still have several bricks of Super-X ammo from 20+ years ago and it's been accurate and consistent. Will shoot up the rest of this current brick but will stay away from all new Winchester .22 ammo for the foreseeable future.