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keep an eye on your factory ammo

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oldreloader

oldreloader

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Apr 24, 2009
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Magnolia AR
I had a buddy brought me some 300 RUM to reload. One of them looked odd as soon as I picked it up. The head stamp said 300 WBY MAG.I called him and he swore all the cases he gave me were once fired factory ammo from the same box. I could tell the case has definitely been fire formed.. Weird that it would even fire. A belted magnum to boot. He said he did remember one case being a little hard to extract!
 
Your story isn't the only one I have heard over the past 2 years with similar circumstances but most of them were handgun ammo, not rifle ammo. Luckily none of the stories I've heard resulted in injury or a damaged gun.
 
This has got to be people pulling ammunition out of the packaging to compare.
I've actually done this with my fiancee. I pull some .223, .308 & .30-06 out to show her and teach her a bit about the rounds. The clerk did not wait around to see if I repackaged it correctly. I made double sure everything was put back where it needed to be, but I could have easily flubbed it.
 
I agree with Field Tester, My LGS has problems like this so he put all the ammo out of reach and when someone wants to see some, no is allowed to be left alone with it.
He also had a problem with someone opening boxes to look at them and swiping one or two when the clerk wasn't looking and handing back the box.

Weatherby ammo is proprietary and I doubt a factory would have mixed it up.
 
Tiger,
300 Weatherby Mag is not proprietary as far as factory loads go. Plenty of commercial companies load it. Remington, Norma, Hornady, Nosler and others.
Now, as to mixing those two up at the factory -- highly unlikely, but anything is possible. More likely it was somebody at the store mixing around.
 
Probably at the store, but not certainly. John Browning once wrote a hot letter to one of the ammo companies. He had found two rounds of .30 Army (.30-40 Krag) in a case of .30 Government (.30-06.)
As I recall he concluded "This would be a fine thing in a machine gun in a hot corner."
 
I doubt a factory would have mixed it up.
Click to expand...

I have seen a 380 round in a box of 9mm once. Had to have been a mistake at the factory. The entire unopened case was purchased.
 
One would think that a little pre-shoot check of factory ammo should always be done. Especially with a very powerful, VERY expensive round like the .300 RUM. The 300 WBY round should never have been chambered. Don't people look at what they put in their guns anymore? Is it the right caliber? Any obvious case defects? Bullet look like its in right? Primer in right? All look like the same OAL? Sure, the factories need to beef up quality control, but we as end users have responsibilities as well.
 
Don't people look at what they put in their guns anymore? Is it the right caliber? Any obvious case defects? Bullet look like its in right? Primer in right? All look like the same OAL? Sure, the factories need to beef up quality control, but we as end users have responsibilities as well.
Click to expand...
Well, no - a lot of people will take something from the factory and assume it is proper.

I've seen too many factory screw-ups over the years to assume much of anything.
Dry transmissions, transfer cases, differentials,...
Missing critical hardware
Loose hardware
Improper/wrong hardware/components

With factory ammunition I've seen:
Blanks in a case of ball ammunition
Ball cartridge in a case of blanks - this would have been real fun if not caught
Cartridge with the bullet backwards
Badly dented cases
Broken bullet
Cartridge with no powder - primary cause of squibs on the range
Cartridge with no primer
Cartridge with upside down primer
Case with no bullet
 
Amen. That's the point.

I find it incredible that someone can load a .300 WBY Mag into a magazine or chamber and not notice a big difference from the .300 RUM. First, it's obviously belted. And it's quite skinnier than the RUMs. Just amazing.
 
With factory ammunition I've seen:
Blanks in a case of ball ammunition
Ball cartridge in a case of blanks - this would have been real fun if not caught
Cartridge with the bullet backwards
Badly dented cases
Broken bullet
Cartridge with no powder - primary cause of squibs on the range
Cartridge with no primer
Cartridge with upside down primer
Case with no bullet
Click to expand...
mdm, how old are you amigo? I'm 46, been shootin' since I was 9 and re-loading for over 20 years and have never seen that many mistakes in factory ammo....... ;-) But, it's been a while since I have bought any center fire ammo.....

The only factory ammo issues I have come across lately have been availability, accuracy and price issues. JMHO

The Dove
 
No, not all people pay attention to what they are shoving in the chamber. I have a bone head son who reached into my reloading cabinet and grabbed a box of .270 win, marked as .270 win, and shot several through the 7 mag.. All of them shattered when he shot them too, but he just kept shooting it, and digging the pieces of brass out of the chamber, before looking at the head stamp and realizing his error. Set the bolt face back pretty good on that 700 too. It took me a while to fix it, fortunately nothing else got banged up.

GS
 
mdm, how old are you amigo? I'm 46, been shootin' since I was 9 and re-loading for over 20 years and have never seen that many mistakes in factory ammo....... ;-) But, it's been a while since I have bought any center fire ammo.....
Click to expand...
I'm 61. I spent 20 years sending rounds down range for the Army, twelve of those years I was working munitions/explosives. Some of what I described I saw on the ranges as we busted open factory packs of ammunition. Some of it I saw while working the munitions field and it was found while doing serviceability inspections and repacks. I once had quite a collection of these things that I kept in my office but they mysteriously disappeared while I was preparing to retire.
 
Yup, also being in the munitions business I've seen the same thing as mdm. But most of that was factory military ammo, with the main problems associated with primers (cocked, inverted, and sometimes just missing), by far. Fortunately, I haven't seen that many problems with commercial ammo, and I've been shooting since 1956. But either way, one simply must check what's put in his/her gun. The person with their finger on the trigger is the one responsible, not the operator at the factory.

Hey mdm, even though I'm Air Force I was given an honorary gold flaming piss pot pin by one of your brothers. Often wear it on caps.
 
Yes, Army Ordnance. mdm said he was Army munitions/explosives=ordnance. The piss (vernacularized from "pitch") pot is their traditional badge, although they have a newer one with crossed cannons. Piss pot look like this: http://www.amazon.com/US-Army-Ordna...18234600&sr=8-8&keywords=us+army+ordnance+pin

The Air Force has never officially adopted the flaming piss pot. It has, however, been incorporated in many lower level and field units' insignia. The official Air Force Munitions Badge, affectionately known as the Budweiser Eagle, is shown here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badges...United_States_Air_Force_Maintenance_Badge.svg
This is the basic badge. The senior level has a star on top, and the master has a wreath (toilet seat) around the star. (Google for better pics) This badge wasn't adopted by the Air Force until the early '80s. So before that, we had no badge of our own. So sometimes as a mark of honor, an Army guy would give an Air Force guy one of his flaming piss pot pins. The tradition continues with Army ordnance/Air Force munitions people working together and now exchanging badges. Challenge coins are an even newer development.

I should point out that the Munitions badge was so popular that the aircraft maintenance and other specialties adapted it and made it their own, usually keeping the eagle.
 
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