I haven’t bought Russian ammo in a long time. Hard primers, dirties up chambers, casings create more friction in some mags causing stoppages, more erosive bullets, and I really don’t want to support Russia in any way.
Blazer alluminum. Hard primers, casings don’t slide against eacher well.
Freedom Munitions steel case. Plated bullets reduce accuracy. Cases split and cause stoppages in my HK P30SK.
M80 type fmj 7.62x51. None of it is accurate. It’s just 4 moa stuff meant for machine guns. Fine if for close range training / practice. Often has steel in the jacket, too.
Ammo, Inc’s Streak line. Incredibly underwhelming, and that was with .45 out of a Thompson semi-auto. If it was going to work out of any of the calibers and weapons, that should have been the right combo.
Hornady Frontier. It seems like an offshoot of the Eldest Son program. I’ve got chrono results where one or two 68gr rounds per case are more than 200fps above their frens, and are faster than M855a1 62gr fired concurrently in the same gun. I can see how people blow up their guns with this brand.
I’ve been having pretty good results from the CCI Clean powdercoated subsonics lately. It runs in my G44 and M&P 15-22 and has the best precision of what I’ve tried in one of those and is tied for best in the other. I just bought 5k more rounds of it a couple weeks ago. You might try that.
I saw some cats shooting an Uzi with that stuff. They seemed to be having a good time. Fun fact: at night with a sufficiently bright weaponlight (PLH, PLHv2, OKW, OWL) on your PCC or SMG, cheap plated 147s reflect light back and are highly visible in flight. Its a hoot on full auto.
I’m picky with ARs; only brass. For 7.62 commie, whatever’s on sale.
Pistol rounds, anything except aluminum. I don’t know what the reason is, but every time I’ve ever used aluminum target rounds, I spend more time clearing malfunctions than shooting across the 6 or so semi-auto pistols.
Before I knew better, back in the mid-1990s I bought some Venezuelan “CAVIM” milsurp 7.62NATO for my M14 type… What crap. I finally sold the rest and bought Radway-Green, etc.
Once bitten… Since then I’ve been hyper-picky.
The only other incident of buyer’s remorse I can remember is Federal’s newish “range pack” of 800rnds of .22lr. It’s very inconsistent compared to anything from CCI or even Fed’s own AutoMatch (I ran all of them over my chrono to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.) The slow rounds are consistently jams in my semi-autos, and that’s a jam every 10-20 rounds.
That is the only ammo that would choke my Mk23 and the last round would always eject to the top of my head or forehead.
It would fail to go into battery several times and would get stuck, could not pull the slide back but could push it into battery fairly easy. If it wasn’t a tank of a handgun I surely would have found a way to eject instead of fire.
This ammo is rough and sharp on the points as well. I bought a bunch when Midway had it on sale for something like $12.99 or $13.99 bx of 20. It may have been even cheaper than that more I think about it, might have been $8.99.
I’ve been pretty disappointed with plain jane Federal 9mm 115 grain ball ammo. It’s under powered and not particularly accurate–bulk ammo like LAX and UMC run better for me. I still have a few hundred rounds of old Peters .22 that I hate shooting, it’s really inconsistent. It’s so lousy I’d feel bad giving it away.
I had a box of the same Federal range pack .22lr and it was horrible. I could tell they were grossly underpowered and then I had a couple of squibs, one of which lodged in the barrel. I emailed Federal and they promptly sent me a return label and reimbursement for the box of ammunition.
I had a minor KB that I suspect was from a double charge in a gun-show reload in a PX4. It stung pretty good. Felt like +P+++++++++, and the case blew out. Gun was fine. Also had a case head separation in a Noveske with brand new ammo that came from a place that also does reman. Never quite figured that out… maybe a fluke.
Maybe. I got lucky and I think there was no charge in the cartridge. Primer ignited and lodged the projectile in the throat. Luckily it would not chamber the next round. I contacted the manufacturer and they basically told me to pound sand. Last time I deal with Fedarm or Fedammo, whatever their name was. I stick to reputable commercial loads only now.