Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Winchester crap ammo

I put together a 350 legend AR. My reloads I made on range pick up brass with a 147 grain Armscore FMJ-RN and Lil'Gun went well. Reasonably accurate and functioned perfectly.

But I only had 57 cases and what I ordered from Starline won't be in until mid to late July. So I bought 10 boxes of Winchester 147 FMJ. I mean it's cheap enough and the brass is OK so why not.

Why not is because it is seriously under powered. Every round I fire showed symptoms of under gassing. Second round would be a bolt over brass failure to feed and the last would drive the base of the round into the magazine and do a nose up jam. A lot of people would say that's a magazine issue but it isn't. None of it would lock the bolt back. All indications that the bolt wasn't going far enough back and needed more hang time. That and the bolt speed and recoil were both a good bit less than my handloads. But it was shooting 3 into 1-1/2" groups.

So, process of elimination, take the ammo apart. I found the inside a bit disappointing. A light gray dull ball powder like I've never seen. And then only 19.6-19.9 grains by my measure. Cheap, like low end former com block ammo. So I replaced it with 28 grains of H110 now I know I have taken the pressure factor out of the equation.

We will see

Remington and later on, Winchester ammo be one of the reasons I embraced hand loading.

Are you using a carbine buffer, with the light loads?

You should chronograph the ammo.

I've been really happy with the Winchester/Olin Deer Season XP and Power Max Bonded factory ammo that I've shot in recent years.

Never understood why they never made the old tin-capped Silvertips with sharp, more aerodynamic, points on them.

Since my Father was a Winchester fan, I rebelled by shooting Remingtons and Rugers when I was a kid.

I shoot mostly factory ammo, with the exception of my 300 Savage. I've gotten away from the standard grade stuff. I run Federal Fusion that a .243 likes, but other than that I've pretty much settled into Federal Premium ammo on two other rifles.

Yep.