A Little Ammo Testing - Four Different Ammos, Which is Best?

[grauhanen]

In a world where a shooter didn’t have to worry about the cost of .22LR match ammo (and what a wonderful world that would be), how would the best ammo be chosen? Some might choose by price – that is, the most expensive variety. Some might choose by the ammo’s reputation, by what others say shoots well. Some pick the ammo that produces the smallest groups. But perhaps none of these methods is the best.

In most cases, many shooters trust that ammo testing to choose the best ammo for a rifle should be straightforward. If enough different kinds of ammo are tested, one or a few should be performing better than others. And if enough of that ammo is tested the results can confirm the reason for choosing one ammo over another.

As many shooters are aware, match ammo is made in batches or lots and not all lots of the same kind or variety of ammo will perform equally.
This post is not, however, about lot testing, the process by which as many different lots of match ammo that can be obtained – possibly of the same variety, possibly of several varieties – are tested and compared to determine the best performer.

This post is much simpler as it’s about only four different ammos. The question is simple: which one of them is the best performing. It’s worth point out that probably none of these ammos are available at dealers any longer.

The four ammos were all bought late in 2020, just over a year ago. I ordered these ammos after some rudimentary and ultimately unsatisfactory testing last year in October. That testing was not ideal because temperatures were uncomfortably cold and each day there was too much wind at the range for reliable results. But time was short, and I tested as best I could.

As it happened, I didn’t have the chance to shoot any of the ammos in better conditions until this shooting season, which for me is now over.
As often suggested by Horseman2 on this forum, when done in very good conditions, testing at 100 yards by shooting ten-shot groups provides an excellent opportunity to assess ammo. Ten-shot groups are a more reliable indicator of how an ammo shoots than do five-shot groups. And 100 yards shows where good ammo really shines, and poorly performing ammo is obvious.

The results that will be shown below are from August to October 2021, the period during which I shot at 100 yards. The number of groups shot by each ammo are only a reflection of how much ammo I had available for 100-yard shooting, not an indication of anything else.

I sought to shoot when conditions were good, that is, not windy. Ideally, there was no wind at all, but to be fair it’s not possible to always shoot in zero wind.

 

[grauhanen]

Below are some of the best ten-shot groups I had the pleasure of shooting this autumn. Note the calipers show the outside edge-to-outside edge. I deducted .210” to arrive at a center-to-center size. These ten-shot 100-yard groups range from .426” to .560” C-to-C.

I must admit that these kinds of groups didn’t appear very often. Shooting ten-shot groups like these isn’t usual.




All the groups shown above were produced by one of the four ammos.

Without regard to ammo cost, should the ammo be chosen from among those that produced the very best groups?

 

[grauhanen]

It’s not a good idea to get carried away by one or a few good groups.

It’s misleading to think that when someone on a forum shows a good group that it’s necessarily representative of regular performance. Too often a poster on one of the many forums that shooters may visit will show one or two groups, implying that’s how he or his rifle shoots.

It’s wrong to think that any of the ammos that produced the few nice groups above can or will do it regularly.

While not every ammo can produce such “wallet groups” as above, some occasionally will. I’ve had SK Rifle Match produce a few remarkable (for SK) groups. Just because there are a few very nice groups, it doesn’t necessarily mean the ammo is consistent or regularly good.

If you shoot enough with a half-decent lot of SK Rifle Match, a few smallish groups will be produced. On the group on the left, the tenth and final shot was the one that appears on the right-most side of the group below. On the group to the right, one errant round spoiled what might have been an otherwise extraordinary group. Of course, they remain what they are.



The best SK RM I tested (out of about four different lots) produced an overall average comparable to Ammo B results (see below) but it didn't shoot as consistently.

In the end, more complete target information is needed.

Below are the results of all my 100-yard shooting. To avoid prejudging any ammo, they’ve been identified only as A, B, C, and D. Since this ammo is 2020 production, and as noted above, there’s probably none or very little of it left at any dealers. In any case, I have little of it, if any, remaining.



To go by this information, it seems obvious that one ammo has produced results that are best. In total, 400 rounds of Ammo C were tested. It is better than the next best ammo, A, by .035”. While that’s not a significant amount (it’s about the same as the thickness of 8-9 sheets of regular copy paper) if the idea is to identify the best performing ammo, that separates first from second, third and fourth.

Without regard for cost, and choosing by performance only, is Ammo C the best choice?

What else, what other considerations, should go into determining which ammo is best?

_____________

More to follow.

 

[grauhanen]

Does an ammo that shoots well in one rifle also shoot well in another?

I shot with two different Anschutz rifles. One is a nearly half-century old 1973-made Anschutz that was originally a 1411, while the other is newer, a 2014-made Anschutz 1913 BR 50. Both have the same BR 50 stocks, both have 69cm heavy barrels. Interestingly, one consistently shoots the same ammo a little faster (20-30 fps) than the other. Other than that, with some exceptions, they both shoot very well. They are shown below as described above.




Some of the ammos shot very similarly with both rifles.

Below is a chart showing the same ammos, but now with the average group sizes by rifle. I haven’t identified which rifle is which, referring to them as Rifle 1 and Rifle 2.



As can be seen, both rifles shot Ammos A and B very similarly. Any differences between the performance of A and B in either rifle is insignificant and inconsequential.

Only with Ammos C and D did a difference appear in how the rifles/ammo performed. Ammo C seems to have been quite good with Rifle 2, but with a smallish sample size of only 13 ten-shot groups. The same ammo wasn’t nearly as good as in Rifle 1. Nevertheless, Rifle 1 did much better with Ammo D than did Rifle 2.

Does this information – how each rifle shot the different ammos – change which ammo should be considered the best performing of all four?

 

[mineguy]

I would be interested to know if you find improvement in the groups as the barrel heats up. That must also be taken into consideration no?
Yesterday I took my first few shots with a new Lilja barrel in my 2013. The barrel is brand new and wearing in with only 50 rounds yesterday before the snow started in earnest. But I find my patterns seem to group better with whatever ammo as the barrel warms up (CZ or Anschutz). I will name the ammo in the photo below, Tenex. The variation from group to group was significant. I have not brought out the crono to check ammo yet. There was a slight breeze as the snow squall started and my intent was only to break in the barrel as opposed to precision. But the heating of the barrel seemed to make a difference as I was shooting in quick succession. The last shot of 5 is to the upper right of the bullseye in the circular target at the bottom. These are at 50m and not grouping anywhere like yours Glenn.

 

[grauhanen]

Rifle 2 with Ammo C clearly produced the best results, although there was a smaller number of groups shot with that ammo and rifle.

It’s possible that results from different days, when conditions may have varied, may have contributed to the different results for Ammos C and D for both rifles. At the same time, Ammos A and B both produced remarkably similar results in the two rifles and those ammos were shot over different days too.

Perhaps charts showing results for individual groups on identified days will help clarify things.

Most targets recorded below had three ten-shot groups. A few had four ten-shot groups.





As a note of explanation, when I began shooting at 100 yards, I used only Rifle 1, keeping Rifle 2 sighted in at a shorter range. As a result, I have more target results for Rifle 1. By the time I began shooting Rifle 2 at 100, it was already September, and the end of my ammo supplies was nearing.

I don’t know if the charts shown above help make more clear which ammo is the best performer. Is it Ammo A, which performed well in both rifles? Or is it Ammo C, which performed very nearly as well in Rifle 1 and much better in Rifle 2?

 

[mineguy]

I would go with ammo C. The variation between your groups is much smaller with that ammo. What is missing is some sense of atmospheric conditions to determine if wind, temp, humidity played a greater role no?

 

[grauhanen]

To recap, how each rifle/ammo performed, the chart from above is shown below.



One of the things obvious from the charts in the previous post is that in both rifles there was quite a bit of group size variation on many of the targets shot. In other words, on many targets there were both unimpressive and good groups. Should that be considered?

Below is a chart showing how each ammo performed by indicating how the groups fell into different ranges of group sizes.

To illustrate using an example, about one-third of Ammo A ten-shot groups were 1” or more in size. Ammo C was very similar in this regard.



It may help to simplify the information above when the size ranges are reduced in number.



Ammo A is the best for Rifle 1 and Ammo C is the best for Rifle 2.

But what if only one ammo was to be chosen to be used in both rifles? Without regard for cost, which one would it be?

If Ammo A was selected, the information suggests that with both rifles about 55% of all the ten-shot groups would be .9” or more. Some 45% would be less than .9”.

With Ammo C was chosen for both rifles, only 45% of all groups would be over .9” or more. About 55% would be less than .9”.

Is Ammo C the best for use in both rifles?

Or is it Ammo A, which shoots steadily and consistently in either one?

 

[stewbud]

Good write up, lots of shooting fun was had! As a 'statistical guy' it is nice to see the numbers.

I would select Ammo A - as consistency seems to be at the top of the list of what we are looking for when shooting.

.

 

[old303]

A lot depends on your game. If you're shooting scored targets with a tiny X ring, then scoring targets like you would in a match tells you what you need to know about that ammo. If you're shooting PRS and it's "IMPACT!" or a miss, then ammo that's more consistently good enough and rarely throws fliers for a miss might do better.

 

[horseman2]

Great write up with the statistics to prove a point.
My testing is based on one box of each lot to be tested as time constraints require securing a case of that ammunition before someone else discovers it.
The lot number I selected was for my Remington 40XB and was before securing two Cooper rifles.
While the Cooper rifles perform reasonably with this lot number it would simplify matters if all preferred one lot.
While reviewing the information I was impressed with the amount of ammo expended . . . 2400 rounds . . . almost half a case but I bet it was fun!

 

[crowellsr]

I was lucky. I had an Anschutz 1416 HB that really liked a particular lot of Lapua Center-X and would shoot sub 1/2" groups about 9/10 during testing of 200 rounds so I bought a case of 5000. Around a year later I decided to buy an Anschutz 1903 MSR that also happened to really like the same lot of ammo and shoots 1/2" groups in good conditions about 9out of 10 times as well. I ended up getting rid of the 1416 but the case of center-x stayed with the 1903. The guy that bought the 1416 said he couldn't get if to shoot nearly as accurate as I was getting with it until he finally found a lot of ammo that it liked and he sent me a message and was over the moon excited.