Thursday, March 4, 2010

Small Bore Ammo too expensive?

I recently picked up a brick of  Lapua Midas L Small bore ammo for my venerable but very accurate, Mod-52D Winchester.  This is a 1963 .22 target rifle that has had many many thousands of rds through it and it seems to like slightly larger dia. of the Midas L ammo.  With a few other purchases I paid my bill at Brunos and noted that I was spending  a little more than I thought it would be.  Well when I got home and looked at the bill, I found that I had payed $16.43/50 rd box for those little rimfire bullets.  Holy cow, I dont even feed my dog that good.  $16  a box--- I must be nuts! Well, it is a great rifle and I do love shooting it--but $16 a box,,arrrgh!
  I'm sure that you have all noticed the rise in prices of Sm bore ammo and you may feel like I do,  it isn't worth it---because it isn't, unless you are a High Master shooter that can expect to shoot a 1600 on a good day and win the Western Wildcats match.  Well, I'm not and I don't so I'm not going to lay out that kind of money for "The Best" ammo.  I am starting to believe that there is lots of good ammo out there at much more reasonable prices, so I am now shooting SK and Wolf ammo---$4 to $6 per box and I think I am getting just as good scores as I would with the "really good" stuff.  With me, it aint the ammo that shoots most of  those bad shots, it's my old eyes and lack of skill. 
  On a good day I can get in the 1590's with a scope (1598-105x last time) and average 1571-70x with irons weather its $16 per box or $4 per box--- so why pay too much for ammo.
  Can $6 ammo shoot well--see below. That's a 100 yd metric target from the last metric match I shot with iron sights.  Other than one called bad shot the group is about 1 min of angle.  Good enough for me and I think that it would have been half that with a scope and a rest.

SK Match ammo, Irons, 100 yds, A33 tgt
See you all at the Western Wildcats matches 3/17---3/21 Phoenix.

2 comments:

NWOshooter said...

I agree! When I bought my 1913 it came with a case of R50 matched at the RWS factory in Germany by the former owner. I've been buying the R50 brick by brick since it's so bloody expensive ($139 per 500) and only using it for big matches (provincials and nationals). In the meantime, I stumbled across a lot of RWS Rifle Match ($74 per 500) that's only a whisker less predictable than the R50 -- so I bought a case of it. And since the bullet is so similar (it's probably rejected R50) I only have to move a click or two when switching back and forth. When I run out of R50 I'll have to reconsider what I feed it, but I may be shooting long-range by then anyway. ;)

Germán A. Salazar said...

Jim, I agree 100%. I've shot eight 1600's, the last of them was with Wolf and I flatly refuse to buy anything else anymore. As you know, my Smallbore shooting has been minimal lately but I haven't lost interest (just time) and the subject of ammo remains very high on my list of "what's wrong with Smallbore".

I think Wolf is perfectly adequate for all our needs and would even like to see some matches where we issue the ammo, everyone gets Wolf from the same lot (can you say Leg Match?). I think we need to take the ridiculous ammo searching and pricing out of the game.

German Salazar
Phoenix, Arizona