Federal blue box ammo, any good?

[Weatherby2]

375 H&H federal blue box on a black bear at about 75 meters bullet found on opposite side under the hide.

 

[45ACPKING]

federal powershok 180gr .303 brit
80 yards quartering away, one shot did it.

 

[gallen270]

good ammo, I find it accurate and never caused me any problems.

 

[Ardent]

For better or worse I've used blue box on wildebeest, gemsbok, lion, and wood bison with many more less showy things in between. Where I buy ammo in small towns, it's the only .375 H&H stocked. I've had excellent accuracy, good on game performance, and honestly a bit poor quality control from it. On the lion hunt while sighting in I found a defective round with the case mouth folded over. I've also had the bullet jump the crimp, potentially as a result of the soft brass c-fbmi and Dogleg mention. Overall I buy and use it without qualms, the power charges seem to be perfectly metered, but in the end it is budget ammo. You are gaining something by spending more, but if it's all you've got, it certainly works- most of the time, this round and the crimp jumping one didn't.

 

[Dogleg]

The 30-06 and .308 are quite popular for Australian feral culling, for those using factory loads. When guys who buy and shoot ammo literally by the pallet swear that it works better than most its hard to argue. Its not entirely a price driven thing, I never thought I'd see blue box 30-06 sell for $42 a box. That was 2 bucks more than Norma in the same store, but that's the nature of import duties.

I'd be careful about short range with the faster magnums but standard calibers do well. It stands to reason that standard factory ammo is designed to make most of the people happy, most of the time if for no other reason than they want to sell lots of it. The farther you stray from "ordinary" the more you should question what you're doing that's is so special to warrant it.

 

[the spank]

I really get a kick out of some of the questions and answers when it comes to ammo. Short of a fly by wire or satellite tracking system take aim and shoot what you have. Today's modern ammo plants turn out the lower cost stuff with as good of results as yesteryears high end stuff due to modern machine tolerances, computer controls etc. IMO. I've had the cheapest of ammo outperform the expensive stuff in my #1 regularily.

 

[ATOM]

Took a nice fat whitetail doe using 7x57 bluebox last fall. It's my first choice for that rifle.

 

[seven_kittens]

I've only used the blue box ammo when I first bought my tikka. For the price it's REALLY accurate. Shooting MOA out to 200 yards no problem. Haven't tried it on game yet.