Shooting 7-year old eley match ammo. I was very surprised at how well it shot. Those are 10 shot groups . I can't wait for the wind to settle down a little bit so that I can try it at distance. This was shot out of a S&S precision built CZ 457 with a shilen 14 twist barrel. I believe I'm going to buy the other five bricks of this.
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Surprising old ammo accuracy
- Thread starter mulish
- Start date
Sorry, but does 22lr ammo loose accuracy if properly stored? I've been running the same lot through one of my rifles since 2008. Haven't noticed a drop in accuracy, even after over 15k rounds. Maybe the ammo was always more accurate than I am, and I haven't hit the threshold yet? Genuine question.
Stored properly may be the key words.
I bought a couple bricks of Eley Match (2lots) for a great price, the lube, or color of it looked off, kind of milky. Neither lot shot well in my application. But, we tried it in a friends rifle and 1 lot of it shot fantastic. No foul.
Was a post on RFC about a guy over extending his budget by buying an asston of older Eley ammo, the lube looked so dried out, and looked like calcium deposits on the bullets themselves. I never followed the story to find out much more than this, I wouldn't have wasted my time with it.
I don't have any 22LR ammo much over 2 yrs old, but would be curious as to what temps and humidity would be the best to store ammo in.
If I had older ammo, I would surely test and fire it, but by nature, wouldn't go out of my way to buy old ammo to save money.
With proper storage shelf life of most ammo is well beyond a human life expectancy. I have shot to good effect a good amount of ammo made in the 1950’s and earlier. The oldest ammo I have ever fired was from the 90’s- 1890’s every round went bang and hit the target. I think rimfire 22 is a little more questionable for precision purposes due to the bullet lube drying or hardening. But for general plinking use I would not hesitate to shoot ammo 80 years old. In fact just a few weeks ago I picked up a bargain batch of old ammo for a very economical price and some of the ammo was in pre WWII packaging. It shot about as well as typical high velocity ammo you would buy today
Another factor is that ammo quality, like most things the last 3-4 years seems to have fallen off. Good lots are still really good but on average ammo variation in factory offerings has increased recently. I have quite a bit of older ammo across several calibers and in almost every case it shoots measurably better than the same brand/load that I've bought in the last 3-4 years, unless you get a really good lot, but the just average lots are well below what they were in the past. This is especially true for low/mid range target ammo. Seems like the biggest impact covid had on the world was for quality control across the board to go to shit, and to give companies a blame free excuse to increase prices at record paces for years.
