Most inaccurate ammo you've ever come across?

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Trey Veston

Trey Veston

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Went to the range today in order to accuracy test a new 9mm reload recipe. 115gr Hornady RN with 4.7 grains of 231. Sig liked it, Glock didn't, Taurus didn't care.

I also brought my Glock G29 10mm just because I hadn't shot it in a while and have been carrying it quite a bit lately while out in the woods.

I brought a box of ammo I had picked up a year or so ago and had never tried or heard of it. My FFL was selling it for $15 for a box of 50. 180gr RNFP. Made by Freedom Munitions and has a stamp on the box saying it is made in Idaho.

So, loaded up 5 rounds and shot it at 25 yards. Normally, my Glock is a tack driver. I competed in GSSF with it. Internals are all stock except the KKM barrel.

First attempt, I got 4 out of 5 shots on a 9" paper plate. That's pretty freaking bad. I then shot it again and the results are in the video. I get nearly a 1-hole group with the G19 at 25 yards, but then completely miss the target with the G29.



I've had ammo do an 8" group at 25 yards, and I've had a S&W Shield do a 12" group due to a bad barrel, but this Freedom Munitions ammo was the worst I've come across.

What's the least accurate ammo you have found?
 
The worst I have found:
A couple of years ago I bought a 500 round plastic ammo can of LAX Ammo 9mm 115 grain reloads. I believe they call it “remanufactured” ammunition. Terrible accuracy from all 3 of my Glocks, 2 G34s and a G45.

At 10 yards that ammo looked like a 12 gauge 00 Buck round had been fired at 25 yards. :confused:

I shot around 100 rounds of it and gave the rest to my son-in-law. He used about 100 rounds of it in his Glock 19X and I believe he still has around 300 of them. He had the same results.

LAX Ammo is a southern CA franchise that I no longer patronize for other reasons besides that ammo I mentioned above.

Come to think off it their reman’d .38 special was no better, but they only soaked me for 100 rounds of that stuff.
 
Can't say I'm a good enough shot with a pistol at 25 to really judge ammo.

Worst I can think of, and it's rifle specific, is Federal fusion 130 grain 6.5 Grendel in my GrendelHunter.

Barely will hold 2" at 50 and 3" at 100, while Hornady Black and even humble Wolf will easily hold Sub MOA at 100 and single hole at 50.

Side by side too, so I know I'm doing my part
 
By far the worst was Centurion 22lr. In all ways it was the worst I have come across. Back when I was young and dumb (don’t forget that disclaimer) I bought a cheap 22 snubnose revolver used. I wanted some ammo for it for the ride home and I just grabbed a brick of the cheap stuff.it is so dirty that it was binding up a loose revolver. It was so inaccurate that I proved repeatedly that it couldn’t hit a 2 ft wide octagon at 20 ft. To top that all off only about 90% would go off if struck twice, more like 60% on the first hit. I got home and quickly amassed a collection of shiny aluminum cans and a box of whatever 22 ammo I had laying around and proceeded to be 100% reliable and that revolver is no tack driver but was easily beer can accurate at 7 yards with 7 of 8 chambers… one still shoots to the left, and I still have the gun, but I gladly included 9 of the original 10 boxes of Centurion ammo I had in a trade. Told the guy it was junk ammo but it made him happy to say he got some boot in the trade. Never again. That ammo was even worse than the wet shotgun shells I tried to salvage.
 
federal black box 9mm. friend gave me 200 rounds. my canik couldn't keep them on a 10" plat at 25 yards. With my reloads it will hold a 2"group at 40yards, with ww with box about 3" 25y. It also had 4 fail to fire, even after multiple strikes.
 
As a youngster I had a friend who was a fan of weird Eastern Bloc handguns, the ammunition for which could sometimes be a trick to find. With decent ammo the guns would hit well enough - they would never have won a bullseye match, but they weren't complete dogs either - but we'd sometimes pick up old boxes of third world milsurp which were comically bad. In particular I recall a batch of 7.62x25 which went off about half the time, and about half the time when it went off it wouldn't cycle the gun, and of those only half could be kept on sheet of notebook paper at seven yards.

I believe we found them in a local shop for $2.50 per box of 50 (in 1980s dollars) and still argued about whether we should go back for a refund.
 
.455_Hunter said:
Shooting .38-40 out of my .44-40 didn't group so well. Fired one cylinder followed by a vulgarity when noticing the tumbling buckshot at 50 yards style grouping. Solved the problem when ejecting the expended brass and comparing it to the next set of loaded ammo.
Click to expand...

A few years back an acquaintance wrote me to ask my opinion on why his .40 had suddenly become terribly inaccurate and started damaging brass. It turned out he had shot a box of 9mm through it.
 
Worst ever was in the 1980's - yellow-box Remington/UMC 150gr. FMJ .30-06. I tried them in my 721 and thought my scope was broken. Three rounds off the paper, one on each corner, 100 yards slow-fire target. Loaded back up with Green-n-Yellow box Remington 150gr. PSP and put two in the center ring, standing, free-hand, w/ sling support. I swapped it at the store where I bought it. Different lot shot fine.
 
Not a handgun, but .308 is the widest range of accuracy I can get. My 700 and M17S will do okay with it all, but the FAL will shoot:
  • European ball, Saltech, Hirtenberger, etc — 3 moa
  • Russian (Wolf?) — 12 moa
  • Indian — 36 moa
Yes, a perfectly accurate rifle, can miss a person at 100 yards with bad ammo.

I knew this before 2008, felt very bad for security services in Mumbai who were firing this same stuff, often from local SMLEs no less. Can you imagine doing all you can, you snuck up there, get a clean shot and... nope. Rifle and ammo won't do it's part so you miss. Ugh.
 
We use a lot of American Eagle (both in 9mm and .223/5.56) stuff at work. It's not very accurate. We've had some bad lots lately, lots of squib loads, duds, and really inaccurate results.

But I really can't say for personal use, because I don't typically buy cheap ammo (other than WWB or Blazer Brass, both of which have always come through for me).
 
I bought a bunch of .40 caliber ammo a couple months ago. Most all of it was Freedom Munitions remanufactured, but they were loaded with Hornady XTP's. Gave them to my dad since I don't own a 40, and after he shot some he told me "that Shield doesn't like those lighter bullets".
I've never seen XTP'S shoot terribly in any handgun with any load so I had to see for myself.
8" steel plate at 10 yards was nearly impossible to hit. Set up a piece of cardboard about 30" square behind the steel to see if it was high, low, left, or right. Yes it was. All of the above.
 
The original CCI Quite 22 LR. I thought it would be ideal for my grandkids to shoot. It was terrible out of several of my 22 guns. I even tried in my very accurate 10/22 build and it was just as terrible. I still have 3 and a half boxes of this stuff sitting on a shelf. Kids don't enjoy shooting and not hitting what they are shooting at so I am not going to foist it off on them.
 
I am pretty brand loyal as far as ammo goes. I like to stick to what I know works. That being said I have gotten some ammo of questionable quality and I seem to recall Aguila ammo being the least accurate budget brand I have tried. I usually end up with a few partial boxes of the stuff after renting a range gun to try out and that was the offered ammo to go with it.
 
Magtech .380. Stringing off paper at 5 yards. Paper was a 2x3' police target. In a PPK. Lots of sparks coming from the barrel, and some bullets hit the range wall. Threw it away. At 5 yards the PPK can do single holes with 50 rounds, even by me, with any other brand. Had some issues in other calibers, but that was the winner.

The second was my own handload .223 1' at 100 yards. Found a different bullet maker after that, but those bullets worked fine in other people's rifles.
 
Worst ammo, in all categories including accuracy, was some magtech 30 carbine i shot years ago. Terrible stuff, dirty, underpowered and inaccurate. The most annoying bit of it was it kept blowing primers out of the cases that would jam up the action. It wasn't until recently I was thinking about that. If I had to guess, I'd say some small pistol primers made it on to that assembly line
 
Aluminum-cased Blazer and I parted ways in the 90s--it was cheap and went bang reliably enough, but where the ammo landed on the target was more random than Schrodinger's Cat. As in the same box would print to different places on the target.

American Eagle is not my first choice, although it was ok through my Maadi.

Everyone's Mileage Tends to Vary.
 
ReggiesFree said:
YIKES!!!
He was next in line for a classic Darwin Award!:uhoh::rofl:
Click to expand...
Shot, myself, wrong cartridge on two occasions. No serious problems.
  • .40 cal Glock. Not my gun, not my ammo. As happens, I shoot stuff to confirm the gun works, is accurate, etc. Shooting and it's indeed being weird, but it works, and isn't TOO inaccurate. Then, a stoppage. Loaded cartridge is perfectly parallel with the bore, but trapped between the breechface and top of the chamber hood, locking the action open. As soon as I see that I am "that's a 9 mm." They /just barely/ retain, and getting a few 9 mm into his dump bag while loading he'd successfully loaded them into the mag, where they worked until one just barely didn't hold in the feed lips during a feed cycle, and popped up comically.
  • 12 ga Mossberg 500, at the range for a shotgun practice day. Out of ammo, go to the pro shop and get another couple boxes to finish this exercise. I resume shooting, and everyone agrees that's a weird noise. But I am knocking down plates, gun hasn't exploded, cycles fine. We do another dozen rounds, I happen to look down as I kick shells away for the next drill and... they are all blown out. Plastic massively bulged to a different circle shape. Pick one up and it says right there "16 ga." Back to the pro shop with the unused portion, boxes, and one sample shell. Two new boxes, and apologies. But... gun ran fine. No problems.
 
I loaded some really bad 357 once when I was starting. Keyhole at 10 yards. It didn't sour me on the brand, and I still regularly do business with myself.

As for factory I had a box of 44 mag magtech that they must have forgotten to crimp. The 6th AND 5th round would pull themselves every single cylinder. I still have one of the loose bullets on my reloading bench along with other interesting projectiles. I actually like federal and magtech 44 the most and usually magtech is fine, and good reloading brass.
 
I don’t think I can blame ammo a whole lot for my “minute of pie plate” days with handguns…especially at the ranges I shoot most handguns at. I think those were pretty much all on me. :(

Rifles? The only ammo that I can honestly say one of my rifles absolutely couldn’t stand was Hornady Light Magnum 117 gr BTSP +P out of my Rem 722 .257 Roberts.

I like the Hornady Interlock billet and really wanted this ammo to work, but I quickly found out that a fistful of gravel thrown at the target would print better groups than I could get with that ammo/rifle combo. I still have a few boxes that someday I’ll shoot just to be able to reload the cases.

3B674036-56B0-4000-9959-7EF75025AD49.jpeg

The partition load shoots pretty well, that’s a keeper.

Stay safe.
 
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We had a couple million round batch of .40 S&W Winchester LAWMAN ammo, as part of an LE contract, that was totally out of spec. AT 10 yards the bullets were key-holing on the target, if they even managed to hit the target. Winchester recalled the entire lot of ammo and we got new replacement ammo that actually worked.
 
Pat Riot said:
The worst I have found:
A couple of years ago I bought a 500 round plastic ammo can of LAX Ammo 9mm 115 grain reloads. I believe they call it “remanufactured” ammunition. Terrible accuracy from all 3 of my Glocks, 2 G34s and a G45.

At 10 yards that ammo looked like a 12 gauge 00 Buck round had been fired at 25 yards. :confused:

I shot around 100 rounds of it and gave the rest to my son-in-law. He used about 100 rounds of it in his Glock 19X and I believe he still has around 300 of them. He had the same results.

LAX Ammo is a southern CA franchise that I no longer patronize for other reasons besides that ammo I mentioned above.

Come to think off it their reman’d .38 special was no better, but they only soaked me for 100 rounds of that stuff.
Click to expand...
Goodness, Gracious, you actually expected something concerning firearms to be any good coming from " The People's Republic of California " ????
 
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