Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Pulled Bullets

Question for the gallery. Do you experience any decrement in accuracy when shooting pulled ( collet type puller) bullets.

I never have, until recently I think I might have seen a real difference.


What say you?

I don't pull that many bullets but when I do, I usual use them as plinkers or fowling rounds. As plinkers I still got reasonable accuracy but I can't say I ever tested them on paper to see how accurate. What were you seeing from your pulled bullets?

I have not seen any difference in hunting bullets like Hornady IL/IB, TSX, and Rem Corelocks but have on varmint bullets or the ELDMs from Hornady.

I'm the same as you..if I've pulled them, they don't get used for hunting. What Ive seen from this batch is everything from an occasional flier to shotgun like groups...depending on rifle.

Did they happen to have a serious crimp or otherwise be really hard to pull? Maybe some of the ultra thin jacketed varmint bullets? That might be a factor.

Personally I haven't had any issues that I've noticed.

Did you have an opporunity to shoot any of the cartridges that the bullets were pulled from? It would be interesting to know how they grouped in the original ammo.

I have shot a lot of bullets pulled with a collet puller and have never encountered the issue you have. I did a test using pulled bullets a few years back and if there was any difference in accuracy it was so minor as to be inconsequential in the gopher and PD fields.

drover

That's been my experience as well.

They were originally loaded by me, and yeah I shot them, they shot fine.

I am checking the rifle with fresh loads that are known to work in it tomorrow, plus I loaded some of the pulled bullets into another rifle that produces good results with virtually everything. Gonna try that tomorrow too.

They aren't necessarily thin jacketed, they are basic Hornady 55 gr with cannelure, but as I said, old and of the older flat base variety . No serious crimp but yes, most were hard to pull....

Maybe were cold-welded then? IDK, just thinking out loud on the keyboard. I'd never thought about inertia pullers ruining accuracy either until JB brought it up.

Will be interested in what you find out, Poobs.

Cold weld for sure but had I done the trick of seating them a tad deeper, the collet couldnt tighten around them...hopefully heading for a range test today if the weather permits.

Tom,

I thought you Montana guys shoot even when its 40 below, 50 mph winds and a blizzard going...

you boys softening up in yer old age?

heck here in Oregon, we shoot in the rain with the wind and driving rain on some days...
but that is much easier in a blizzard...

shooting in a fog bank day in the valleys, does add some challenges.. but you can watch the bullet trail thru the fog which is kinda cool..

but everyone knows Montana guys are tougher than Oregon guys any day of the week....

This is all true, but shooting at 40 below is for the "boys" I'm all grown up now

However I did hunt predators on a REAL foggy night in Texas, and yes you could see the path the bullet cut through it. Very Interesting .

Montana guys ARE tougher than Oregon guys...'nuff said.

OK I ran my tests today and found out there was a decrement in accuracy with the pulled bullets...not much of one though, so I'll be loading them up for gophers as they still shot minute of gopher.

Mule Deer has posted many times that you have to run wind flags to really dope out your groups. Were you using wind flags today?

No...wind was at my back and only 6mph, plus I was only shooting 100 yds. Told me all I needed to know.

Kind of surprised you'd get any loss collet pulling. Did you tumble the pulls, or leave the "cold weld mung" and just reseat?

32, dead calm, sunny today. So I worked outside. No fun for ME doing stuff like shooting. Bah humbug.

May depend on how much neck tension is on them. Light, where they pull easy the collet won’t need the grip that a lot of neck tension would require.
I sold my 7 mag last year and had 40 loaded cartridges and a bunch of fired brass. One of my friends has a 7 mag and I told him he could have all the brass. I pulled the bullet and loaded on my 7mm-08 and they shot as well as the new ones. I only shot 4-5 of them though, so maybe I just got lucky, but I only had .002 neck tension.

I’ve pulled my share of bullets. One thing that makes it feel a little better is that a lot of them were factory cartridges that must have had a bad primer. The casing is still valuable so I pull the bullet and keep the brass. There have been plenty of my reloads I had to pull because of building pressure signs when increasing powder charges. When the cartridges are telling you something, you better listen. As far as using the pulled bullets, no, unless they’re the expensive ones. Not usually 22 or 6 mm, but the 7mm to 338 I will use like the others mentioned as plinkers. I figure when they are $1.20 + a piece, I better find some use for them. I keep all of my pulled bullets in an empty 22wmr plastic jar to see how many get pulled over my lifetime.

have you ever used one of the RCBS impact hammer pullers?

That is usually what I use, so I don't notice any loss of accuracy at all...

For some friends, I use to reload ammo for them, when they were sniffling about their cost on "premium" ammo...

So I would tell them to buy a box of kind of the low dollar stuff, like Federal or Remington, or two...
Then pick up a box of the "premium" bullets they would like to use...

I'd just use the impact bullet puller, uniform the charge weight, and seat their "premium" bullet back on it.

to make life simpler, If they wanted to use a 150 grain Partition or Ballistic Tip on say an 06 or 308, buy a box or two of ammo from Federal or Remington Etc, with a 150 grain bullet. They'd usually let me keep the bullets from the factory ammo for my time...

I used a lot of those type bullets for letting kids done with their Rifle Shooting Merit Badge, to load their ammo for their first deer hunt with dads being there with them... The Dad's had as much fun with that as the kids did...

a 12 year old really lights up when he loads and then shoots his first ammo...its gotten a number of kids into loading their own ammo... Run into some 20 years later and they proudly tell me since I taught them to handload their first ammo, they've been doing it for the family since they were 13 or 14.. and some of them are proud to tell me of their collect of 15 to 20 rifles and pistols... handed down by grandpas and uncles most of the time...

My grandpa use to tell us boys :"What goes around, comes around...so ya better make it good!" Well Gran'pa, that's exactly what I have done...helped a lot of young shooters get started in life..