I shot 410 skeet with factory AA , Estate, and my handloads. I haven't patterned them, but my scores didn't seem to change with the ammunition.The same with Fiocchi, Federal Gold Medal, and 28 gauge handloads.
None of the brands you mentioned are crap like 12 and 20ga promo loads
No hard shot, quality wads etc in promo loads
Cheers
Interesting read here. NO 12ga promo load I have ever patterned came close to my reloads
Few things are dearer to my heart than cheap ammo, unless it’s an open bar at a sorority house. But it does make sense to figure out just how cheap ammo got that way. There are all sorts of reasons, some good, some bad.
Promo ammo varies all over the place as to quality. Some of the best I have used was the Federal “All Purpose” ammo that WalMart was selling in sleeves of four. I couldn’t detect any performance difference between that ammo and factory Gold Medal target loads. I once bought so much of it at one time that one of the wheels on my shopping cart collapsed on the way to the checkout counter. I remember how the dealers screamed to Federal about it.
That was a few years ago. I haven’t tested any recently.
One thing that you have to be careful of with promo ammo is that its quality can change overnight. They don’t have to maintain consistency the way they do with their first line ammo.
There are a number of different ways to make promo ammo less expensive. We all hope that it is less expensive just because the store that carries it was able to buy it in quantity. Sure. And the moon is made of cheese.
Promo ammo is cheaper because corners have been cut somewhere. The corners cut may, or may not, matter to you.
You can make a shell cheaper by using a cheaper hull. RemChesters use nice hulls on their top line stuff. On their promo loads, they use cheaper hulls. Reifenhauser hull construction is cheaper than compression construction. Federal makes all their hulls of Reifenhauser construction, but you can also cheapen up the plastic and use different materials for the metal. Brass plated steel is cheaper than real brass. Differences in hull quality affect performance minimally. Cheap hulls just aren’t as good for reloading.
Shot: This is the biggie. Shot is the most expensive component of the shell. The less shot you can get away with putting in, the cheaper the shell. That’s why so many of the promo “dove and quail” loads are one ounce.
Quality of shot is also an area for potential savings. I haven’t looked at commodity prices lately, but the hardening agent used in most shot, antimony, used to cost around ten times as much as lead. There is a price incentive to use as little as possible. When you do this, you end up with softer shot and less reliable patterns.
How much does the shot matter? It’s hard to tell on an absolute scale because the wad and powder also play a part in patterning, but it’s pretty safe to say that, all else remaining equal, soft shot can open up a pattern ten percent or better. It will also lengthen the shot string.
For example, tests I ran with Remington STS and Remington Gun Club ammo in my Beretta 303 with a factory Full choke of .035″, showed the 3 dram STS 1-1/8 #7-1/2 load printing an average of 75%, while the identical load in the Remington Gun Club brand averaged 65%. More open patterns aren’t necessarily bad. For a 16 yard occasional trap shooter, a 65% pattern is a pretty good one.
Wads can vary in cost and performance too. Wads are made from polyethylene plastic. This plastic can either be “virgin” or previously used, probably coming from recycled pop bottles and the like. The problem with recycled poly is that it is harder to control the blend of plastics it contains. This can translate into wads that don’t seal quite as well in cold weather. Cold weather makes plastic get harder. You want the wad skirt to remain flexible enough to seal against the walls of the hull and barrel. If it doesn’t, you can get bloopers, or at least off-sounding shots. Sound familiar. I have definitely noticed some off sounding shots with Remington Gun Club promo loads when used in cool weather in a gun with lengthened forcing cones. There were no off sounding shots with premium target ammo. Whether the problem was the wad, I can only guess, but I think so.
Wad performance can also differ when a wad built for a compression formed hull is used in a straight sided Reifenhauser hull. I don’t think that his is a much a problem as the wrong kind of plastic mix. I’ve happily used Winchester wads (for compression formed hulls) in Federal Reifenhauser hulls without a problem.
I don’t think that cheap primers are really an issue. Ammo companies definitely change primer brisance depending on the load, but I don’t think they change quality. I have never noticed more misfires with promo loads than with anything else. Even with promo loads, no company wants failure of ignition.
Powder: Cartridge makers don’t use exactly the same powders that you buy over the counter as a reloader. They do a lot more blending with each lot of commercial powder to get the burn they want. With reloading powders, they have to maintain consistency with previous batches at all costs. But promo loads may well contain dirtier powders (like old Red Dot vs new Red Dot).
Promo loads will just about always contain the fastest powder possible for the load. The reason is that you use less of the faster powder than of a slower powder to obtain the same speed. Less powder makes the shell cheaper. Whether or not the fast powder gives the optimum pattern in that particular promo load combination is less a consideration to the manufacturers than the price.
Promo loads do vary in quality quite a bit. It certainly makes sense to use them in your case. If only Remington Gun Club ammo is available at a good price in your area, then by all means use it for 16 yards. Just to a little patterning with your chokes to get the pattern you want. If Federal Top Gun is also available for the same price, try that and compare the patterns. I don’t know what Federal is using in Top Gun these days, but it might surprise you. Sometimes you can get a deal on off-brand ammo. Look into Olympia and some of the others. They often cut prices to try to get market share. As with any ammo, test it before you buy a bunch. But you knew that.
Best regards,
Bruce Buck
The Technoid writing for Shotgun Report, LLC
(Often in error. Never in doubt.)
