"Ratings" and/or Reviews of Multiple Brands of AMMO?

[GConn]

Greetings:

Anyone aware of any professional, INDEPENDENT "ratings" of ammo brands, please?

I am guessing (purely speculating), but I would suspect the top three "SELLERS" are (?) Remington, Federal, and Winchester (maybe in that order - perhaps not), but I would LOVE to hear/read-see documentation on lesser-priced and lesser known brands as well.

Short of that, I'd be happy to read unbiased, quality reviews, and/or see unbiased, quality anecdotal reportings.

Currently looking (mainly) for info/data on 12-gauge, 9mm (and .45 if available), and some wheel-gun stuff, .38, .357, & .44 cal. info/data.

Am I asking too much (hah)?

Thanks in advance for any/all replies,
G. C. in V-A . . .
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[Davek1977]

While an interesting idea, "bulk" reviews of ammo won't really work. Ammo can only be as good or as bad as the gun it was shot in. A review of say "Winchester Buckshot" would vary considerably depending on the gun used. Just because it patterns well in a 18 in, IC choked pump gun doesn't mean one would get similar performance form a 28 in. barreled full choked sxs. When it comes to ammo, the best thing you can do is find the type of projectile you want (match HP, soft-points for hunting, FMJ, etc) and find a load utilizing it that shoots accurately in your particular gun. What shoots 1 in. 100 yard groups in your buddies AR-15 might only give 4 in. groups in your rifle, making his "review" rather worthless in terms of usefulness to you, yet his gun may shoot your pet load just as poorly.

 

[Red Tornado]

That would be great, but another problem is the sheer number of ammo manufacturers. There are dozens of national and international brands, as well as probably thousands of remanufacturers/manufacturers. It seems like it would be nigh impossible to get a rating on each of them. I think some sort of group effort, perhaps on a forum, would be the only way to get a good cross section.
RT

 

[230RN]

Not scientific, just a collection of observations but in over 50 years of reading gun reviews in the American Rifleman, it strikes me that since they were testing the guns, and not the ammunition, the accuracy results could be construed as pretty "independent" long-term testing of the ammunition.

The point is that in almost all of those reviews the accuracy tests of the guns with various brands of ammunition show Federal coming out on top. Not necessarily by a lot, not all the time, but often enough to tickle the "correlation cortex" of my brain. And the group sizes are measured, so not much bias can be introduced there.

Of course, nowadays the field of ammunition manufacturers has expanded from the oldey-timey ones, Federal, Winchester, Remington, and there is a lot of custom ammuniton available now, as well as European and combloc ammo, but I still see fractions of an inch "better" group sizes often enough to confirm this notion. I have no affiliation with Federal --this is just a collection of anecdotal observations over many guns and many tests reported.

Yes, you may find CCI in your .22 shoots best, or whatever, and I have some favorite off-the-shelf ammo for certain of my guns, but I'm talking long-term testing over many, many guns in reasonably rigidly-controlled conditions where the ammunition itself is not under review. The testing staff will make note in the body of the article on the guns that so-and-so many malfuncions occured with this-or-that ammunition, but that does not necessarily mean that the ammunition was at fault.

I could be wrong, but that's the way it looks to me.


Terry, 230RN