The Truth About Wolf 7.62x39

[Prince Yamato]

You're thinking of Silver Bear. It had a "snub nosed" lead tip. That is the only "Animal Brand" ammo that I've ever shot that was noticeably more accurate. I think it has to do with the zinc coating. I haven't been able to find that ion 7.62x39 lately.

 

[kcshooter]

pfft.

I wasn't under the impression I was paying $4 a box for match grade ammo anyway. Were you?

You're thinking of Silver Bear....I haven't been able to find that in 7.62x39 lately.

www.ammunitiontogo.com. Good pricing too.

 

[HJ857]

Another much more problematic issue with accuracy in an SKS is the chamber.

In addition to quantifying Russian load variances, I used a case length gauge to find the maximum bullet length in both my Norincos. Using the typical Stoney Point case gauge I found that pushing the bullet to the lands results in the bullet falling out of the casing.

So there is a tremendous jump to the rifling. If you consider that the bullet is probably seated to approximately the bottom the case neck, then you have maybe up to a 1/4" jump and the bullet is out of the case before it even hits the rifling.

A 0.020 to 0.040 bullet seating difference can have a significant impact on accuracy, and the SKS is WAY past that. The ammo variances are of no real consequence in this light.

 

[yesit'sloaded]

So am I the only one here getting MOA out of an SKS with handloads?

 

[gtmerkley]

May by next you could try the next thing with bear.

 

[cracked butt]

Another much more problematic issue with accuracy in an SKS is the chamber.

In addition to quantifying Russian load variances, I used a case length gauge to find the maximum bullet length in both my Norincos. Using the typical Stoney Point case gauge I found that pushing the bullet to the lands results in the bullet falling out of the casing.

So there is a tremendous jump to the rifling. If you consider that the bullet is probably seated to approximately the bottom the case neck, then you have maybe up to a 1/4" jump and the bullet is out of the case before it even hits the rifling.

A 0.020 to 0.040 bullet seating difference can have a significant impact on accuracy, and the SKS is WAY past that. The ammo variances are of no real consequence in this light.

Have you ever tested a Remington 700 short action, a swedish M96, or a Weatherby? They all require a huge bullet jump to engage the rifling, yet few people would call them inaccurate rifles.

 

[benEzra]

One thing that CAN be said about Wolf, is that the old Norinco copper-washed lead-core FMJ (bright yellow "generic" box) makes Wolf look downright accurate. I still have some of the old Norinco stuff laying around, and recently shot a couple of magazines of it out of the SAR-1, interspersed between magazines of recent-production (polymer coated case) Wolf.

With the Wolf, I was keeping most shots on the steel chicken (or duck, or whatever kind of bird it was) at the 200 yard line. Then fired some of the old Norinco stuff at paper at the same 200 yard distance; it stayed on the paper, but that's about all you could say for it, as the "group" looked more like a shotgun pattern. It was *awful*.

 

[Wolfgang2000]

My SKS carbine shoots wolf at 2 min of felon at 100 yards. It's all I need. I will say that Wolf HP has dropped every deer I've shot with it.

 

[Mr White]

I'd hate to drop a 7 on the 600-yard target because of that kind of inconsistency.

If you shot Wolf in an XTC high power match, a 7 on the 600 d target might be the highlight of your day!

You're thinking of Silver Bear. It had a "snub nosed" lead tip. That is the only "Animal Brand" ammo that I've ever shot that was noticeably more accurate. I think it has to do with the zinc coating. I haven't been able to find that ion 7.62x39 lately.

I have about 3K rounds of that left. I'm not terribly impressed with its accuracy either. The SKS isn't the gun I grab when I want to play accurate fire. I'll grab the Garand, AR, K31 or M39 and hammer the center out of the target all day long. With my SKS, I just scare the target into submission.

 

[northwestneighbor]

Using those numbers, you get a mean powder weight of 24.48 grains with a standard deviation of 0.16 grains, and a mean bullet weight of 121.96 with a standard deviation of 4.25. Using the "68-95-99.7" rule (assuming a normal distribution) we can estimate that 95% of the powder weights will be between 23.99 and 24.97 grains and 95% of bullet weights will be between 117.7 and 126.2 grains. So, you can expect about 1 round per box to have a powder weight and/or bullet weight outside those ranges. Actually, the powder figure doesn't all that bad. The bullet weight range (about +/- 4%) figure may not even make of a difference to the average shooter if the weight is distributed evenly.

I appreciate the theory and attention to detail, but when n=5 you really can't assume a normal distribution. We would need data on at least a few (many) boxes, different batches, lots, brands, etc. to begin quantitatively describing brands. With a sample size of 5, we have no basis of comparison when determining whether we are looking at a lottery-winning, low-probability combination of cartridges or a bland portrait of the random distribution.

How does other commercial ammo stack up?

Good question. Where is our control variable?

Oh well, I'm just playin devils (science teacher's) advocate. Reading most of the replies here it sounds like the data in the OP pretty much corroborates with common experience. Even if it is kind of lacking as a descriptive experiment due to a tiny sample size and no control variable, the general consensus, based on a LOT of practical experience around this forum, is probably enough for us to conclude that Wolf ammo is inconsistent.

 

[Shear_stress]

I appreciate the theory and attention to detail, but when n=5 you really can't assume a normal distribution.

True, things get kind of hairy with small sample sizes (what constitutes "small" may depend on the field--just look at animal studies). However, I meant this as a back-of-the-envelope deal--think pilot data.

 

[Woodsmaster]

Wolf brand ammo is better than having to put rocks and gunpowder down the barrel if you want to do some shooting.

 

[Poor East Texan]

My Norinco is easily center mass of bad guy accurate with Wolf. That's about all I need.

 

[joop]

FYI (I just finished taking a couple statistical colleges here at the local university):

5 samples is NOT ENOUGH data to make a meaningful statistical conclusions. Keep in mind that you need 1000 data points just to get +/-3% margin of error.

 

[joop]

I don't doubt that wolf ammo is not sniper grade though.

 

[FEG]

I don't doubt that wolf ammo is not sniper grade though.

When I was visiting Ireland, I was just a poor student. We would often eat canned soup and what not. I remember asking an Irish house wife if there was such a thing as canned Irish stew worth buying. She said, "I s'pose there's such thing as the best of a bad lot." That killed me.

Anyway, steel cased ammo seems to be a bad lot, by and large. At one time, Wolf was probably the best option available. These days, I mostly buy Barnaul. It's not as consistent as a lot of higher priced brass-cased ammunition, but it does seem to give better results at the range than Wolf. Golden Tiger is also pretty decent.

That said, I have no doubt that pulling bullets on any of this stuff isn't going to win friends and influence people in a positive way.

 

[Toten Kopf]

I have fired thousands of rounds with Wolf and only had two problems (perhaps from one lot), which was case head separation and split cases. I don't mean that I had just two rounds that separated or split, it was about 10-15.

After that I inspected every round that I had at the time (which was 2000) and found many with what appeared to be cracks around the case head and longitudinal stress marks on the case body.

I contacted Wolf and they requested that I send all subject rounds to them for review, which I did (they paid for shipping).

I then received a letter from Wolf indicating that they would replace all the defective rounds and in addition would send me 500 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition for my troubles.

After that, I have inspected all my additional Wolf purchases to ensure that I didn't receive any "bad" rounds which I haven't. I have attached a few pictures of the defective rounds.







As far as the difference in bullet and powder weight, for me it really doesn't matter since I consider Wolf to be just fun/plinking ammunition.

 

[yesit'sloaded]

I was just trying to illustrate that people that complain about accuracy in their SKS after shooting Wolf need to shoot handloads before they write off the gun as inaccurate. Most of them can be 1.5-1MOA guns out to 200 yards with handloads. Just like Mosins. People shoot nothing but 50+ year old ammo out of them and then complain when they get nothing better than 4 MOA. If they slug the bore and use the right ammo most of those clean up to be MOA or better. I agree 5 rounds is way too small of a sample, but it was just to illustrate a point.

 

[Shear_stress]

5 samples is NOT ENOUGH data to make a meaningful statistical conclusions. Keep in mind that you need 1000 data points just to get +/-3% margin of error.

This has been a great thread--lots of good debate. That's why I like THR so much. Actually, though your statement is true on paper, it doesn't have a lot of practical application. We don't know the population mean or population standard deviation. To set the sample size needed to get a decent ME, we only have the sample standard deviation to go on. This is why scientists run pilot studies, the results of which can then be used to estimate the sample sizes needed for their follow up studies. Note the emphasis on the word "estimate".

Let's say we want to estimate bullet weight within 1 grain (our ME) with 95% certainty. We have an s (sample standard dev) of 4.25 and 4 degrees of freedom (= 5 -1 samples). That DOF and alpha value give us a two-tailed t stat of 2.776.

ME = t * s/(sqrt(n))---->gives us an n (estimated sample size) of only 140, not 1000. The central limit theorem means that you usually don't need ginormous samples (which is nice because otherwise stats would be pretty useless). If we are content to have our ME just equal the standard deviation, we can get away with a sample size for our "actual study" of only 8 (or, about the minimum sample size they use in the life sciences). Ideally, you'd still want more than that, or your power goes all to hell. The "magic number" for sample size is still around 30. However, like I said, the numbers I gave above are only "back of the envelope" estimates making the *assumption* (doncha love that word) of normal distribution.

All that said, I have had nothing but good luck with Wolf ammo. I even run it almost exclusively in my, gasp choke, ARs without any trouble (knock on wood).

 

[DeerSlayer7600]

I fire that through my sks at 50-100yds and it stays pretty consistent.