Accuracy of bullets with pull marks

[Sommerled]

Please pardon this thread if it has been covered before, my search came up with nothing.

I was given a few thousand .224 LC 62 grain SS109 AP bullets that are moderately marked up from being pulled. I suppose it was from military rounds.

I loaded a small batch with once fired LC brass, 23.5gr of Benchmark, and CCI small rifle primers. They were seated to the cannelure and had a small crimp placed. The brass was properly sized and trimmed.

I fired them (twenty rounds) from the bench in a Rock River AR with 1:8 twist and decent optics at a distance of 100 yards. Negligible wind and the temp a balmy 23 degrees F. (Thats shirtsleeve weather for a Minnesota winter)

They were all over the place! You couldn't have covered the group with a large pie plate. (With 60 gr V-Max I get 3/4" groups with this rifle.)

Needless to say I was very dissapointed. My intent was to make blasting rounds out of them or even storage ammo for a "rainy" day. I would have been satisfied with 2 or 3" groups for such purpose but not 12-13"!

Any thoughts or comments about the accuracy potential being degraded by pull marks?

BTW Happy new year everyone!

Sommerled

 

[moosehunt]

Interesting. I've experimented with some in various calibers and found that as long as one wasn't after benchrest accuracy, they were fine. I suppose it depends on just how buggered up they are.

 

[JimmAr]

Any bullets with imperfections such as these will be categorized as "non-consistent".

 

[R.W.Dale]

any bullet that would likely have pull marks isn't a very accurate bullet to start with even before it was loaded

FMJBT bullets are notorious shotgun pattern makers even before they were pulled Be they the .224 variety or 147grn .308fmj. You're groups are all too typical of the performance I've seen with projectiles of this type even when new

 

[jjohnson]

Yeah, what they said.

Well, pulled bullets have their place, but it's not at benchrest accuracy testing. They're a great alternative for some applications.

If they have pull marks, they've been handled enough to show it, right? I would use pulled bullets for plinking, for fireforming, and maybe for teaching somebody how to conduct themselves safely at a range. I wouldn't use them for varmint hunting or for match shooting.

 

[hershey]

try backing off on your powder, i shoot the same exact bullet out of my delton 16" upper $395 new, and get consistant 1 1/2" groups, i am only loading 23gr of varget, i tried pushing them harder and it was ugly, tried pushing them read hard in a 22-250 and it was even worse.