Do you weigh your bullets?

[ScottIke]

I was getting ready to reload some 160 grain Spitzers today and threw a few on my scale. Well, that turned into a rabbit hole real fast!
The half box of Speers had an ES of 1.76 grains. Dropping the lightest and heavyest lowered the ES to .91 grains. Is this much variance in weight acceptable for a hunting round? How much would be considered too much based on advertised weight?

 

[JFrank]

I never weigh bullets because it never made a difference on the target although I also never buy Spitzers either.
Sort them into .5 grains , load and shoot them that way, it’ll be plenty close enough.

 

[dh1633pm]

Never go down the rabbit hole. No good will ever be found there. For target shooting maybe. For hunting, found it best to go with what I have. Usually more than good enough. Best to not know what I don’t know. When target shooting and you need all 10’s, everything and anything is suspect and needs checking. Just me, others might disagree, and they’re not wrong. There are levels of anal retention. This is mine.

 

[gwpercle]

Nope ... if the bullet mould or box says 158 grains ... then I use that data and load em as such !

Ignorance can be a blissful thing at times ... trust me on this !

Nothing good comes out of weighing bullets ... Nothing !
Gary

 

[mm93]

I weigh my cast bullets and sort them by + or - 1/2 grain for bullets above 400 grain weights. For bullets under that it's plus or minus 1/4 grain. I don't toss out bullets over or under, I just group all those in a certain weight range above or below with others in the same range. As long as I load and shoot them as a group they all shoot together fine.
I only do this for match rifle bullets, and never bother with pistol bullets at all. Distances are too close to worry about groups being affected at under 50 yds. My match rifle bullets get fired at 500-1000 yd. targets, so bullet weight is critical.

 

[irving]

That reminds me of an interview with road racing cyclist Floyd Landis almost 20 years ago. One question was about his nutritional regimen, with the interviewer asking, "Do you weigh your food?". It made me laugh when Floyd answered, "I don't weigh my food. I eat my food".

In that vein, my somewhat smart-aleck answer is: I don't weigh my bullets. I shoot my bullets.

 

[Walkalong]

I don't weigh bullets.

 

[westernrover]

Use better bullets if you want to be able to expect tighter tolerances without sorting.
I would expect more consistency from lathe-turned bullets like those from Hammer, Cutting Edge, Lehigh.
I've had good results from Barnes without weighing or sorting them.
Generally speaking, I get better consistency when I weigh and sort components like primers, brass, and bullets, but the improvement would be negligible for hunting. For example. if my velocity for unsorted components has an SD of 15 and for sorted the SD is 4 fps, that won't make any difference for hunting.
For my purposes, sorting will not make enough of a difference, especially if I use better quality components.

 

[mcb]

I always weight bullets, or alway a sample of them. The variation gives me a sense of quality to a small degree but more important I make sure they are the correct weight. Maybe the label is wrong or missing. A quick check on the scale confirms and away I go.

That said the variation the OP saw would only concern me if I was going to be shooting very long range.

 

[243winxb]

Weigh only to fix a problem.

When accuracy goes from 3/4" to almost 3" @ 100 yards, its time to look/weigh bullets first, by lot number.

Try a different lot.

Now, every component i load, get a lot number assigned to it.

 

[.308 Norma]

Is this much variance in weight acceptable for a hunting round?

I recon it is. I've been using store bought bullets for hunting (in both factory loads and my own handloads) for better than 65 years now, and I've never weighed a one of them. As a matter of fact, there's probably a lot of folks that would claim I'm too particular when it comes to building my own big game hunting ammo - I work with it until I can put at least 3 bullets in an inch at 100 yards. And that's without weighing the bullets.
It's not the same thing, but back when I was into casting my own bullets (mostly 38 and 44 handgun bullets), I read somewhere that I should weigh them in case there were any imperfections - like maybe air bubbles inside them. So, I too went down that rabbit hole. It didn't take me long to learn that I had better things to do with my time.
On the other hand, we're talking about your time. Spend it however you want.

 

[AJC1]

I weigh bullets, because I shoot a lot of factory seconds. I bought 400 of the Hornaday 160s and sorted them into half grain groups. If you shoot high quality bullets, probably not nessary at all. If there is an opertunity people will weigh or sort everything... those same premium bullets are sorted by competitors for base to ojive. Some of the same crowd weigh and sort primers.

 

[.308 Norma]

It made me laugh when Floyd answered, "I don't weigh my food. I eat my food".

In that vein, my somewhat smart-aleck answer is: I don't weigh my bullets. I shoot my bullets.

Ha! I don't weigh my bullets. I shoot tasty animals and varmints with them.

 

[.38 Special]

For cast bullets in long range blackpowder target rifles, yes. Relatively small variations can make a difference at 600+ yards, and cast bullets can occasionally be way out.

For everything else, no. Factory jacketed bullets are really good now, and the odds of finding one so far off that you'd notice it on the target are vanishing small. And assuming any kind of reasonable hunting range, just, no.

 

[2ndtimer]

Only the seconds I have received from American Reloading since they come in boxes of 500 with bothe 124 gr and 115 gr. Then since I am weighing them anyway, I also sort them into > 115 and < 115.

 

[ms6852]

Only bullets I weigh are 22lr before hunting season. I like to practice shooting off hand at 200 hundred yards a couple of months before deer season. I want to minimize as much as possible shooter error. I know that sounds absurd but I do it for me, gives me a piece of mind plus minimizes the lies I tell to myself that it was the bullet and not the pot of coffee I drank for the shotgun pattern I get. Not really a group I shoot for but more of was I able to hit the paper plate at 200 yards 10 times off hand. I figure this is about the kill zone size on deer. I fell into this rabbit hole years ago and have not climbed out of it. The rest of the year I don't weigh.

 

[nettlle]

If I try new brand or new style of bullet I will weigh a few out of the first box. Just to prove the honesty of the manufacturer I guess. I have never found a bad bullet yet. After the first box I don't weigh them again. Just a habit I have that contributes absolutely nothing to my reloading process.

 

[JohnMc]

A couple of times for giggles, that's it.

 

[TEXASJD]

I don’t weigh bullets, not because I haven’t tried I just couldn’t see any difference even on a BR gun

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

Weigh bullets?
Only when I order from Midway and have to sort them out by weight after all the boxes bust open.

 

[Blue68f100]

The only time I weight bullets is to confirm that the weight is what's marked on the box. Then its just a few.

 

[jmorris]

Generally but often just a few.

I always weigh my alloy using 1 mold I use as a "standard". I can drop bullets from 210 grains to 240 grains, from the same mold, just by altering the alloy.

 

[lightman]

I weighed bullets when I competed but not for hunting rounds. Out of a 500 count box of SMK's 99+% would weigh the same down to 1/10th of a grain with the other 1% falling with either 1/10th of a grain either over or under. This was using a scale with 1/10th of a grain resolution. Probably was a waste of time being as they were so close together in weight.

 

[Hooda Thunkit]

I weigh my cast rifle bullets, at least the ones I use in competition. Target weight +/- . 5gr.
So a 190gr will weigh 189.50 - 190.49 grains.

Handgun cast I don't bother.

 

[AK Hunter]

If I buy a new batch of bullets from a different manufacture I will go through them to see how far away of the gr weight that it is supposed to be. Most of the bullet manufactures I buy from stay very close to the gr weight that it is sold as.
I don't weigh loaded ammo.