My wife and I recently arrived home to find someone parked on the access road to our lake (a state-licensed reservoir). The man treated us to a gobbledygook story about the reservoir being on Federal Lands (which it is not) and being told to meet his "Supervisor" there.
We informed him the reservoir was entirely on private land and he should leave. He did. But as it seemed that something more nefarious was going on, I armed myself and grabbed a couple of magazines for my Mini-14 that dated from 1982.
I didn't have any need to shoot them in self-defense, but I was curious about how they had aged.
They were loaded 22.0 grains of IMR-4198 under a 52 grain Speer hollow point. I only got a chronograph in 1993, so that became my baseline. Bottom line is that rounds loaded in 1982 delivered the same velocity in 2024 as they had in 1993.
While this may not apply in all circumstances with all powders and storage conditions, anyone concerned about cartridges that have not been shot decades after loading, this may help.
We informed him the reservoir was entirely on private land and he should leave. He did. But as it seemed that something more nefarious was going on, I armed myself and grabbed a couple of magazines for my Mini-14 that dated from 1982.
I didn't have any need to shoot them in self-defense, but I was curious about how they had aged.
They were loaded 22.0 grains of IMR-4198 under a 52 grain Speer hollow point. I only got a chronograph in 1993, so that became my baseline. Bottom line is that rounds loaded in 1982 delivered the same velocity in 2024 as they had in 1993.
While this may not apply in all circumstances with all powders and storage conditions, anyone concerned about cartridges that have not been shot decades after loading, this may help.