Is it possible for a gun to HATE a particular brand of cart?

greg11

greg11

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I took my Savage Precision Carbine out today for the first time. I only brought with me a box of 180gr Remington Corelokts. They sucked.

I'm talking 5-6MOA suck.

Everything on my rifle appears to be sound. I double checked my base, rings and the optic itself. All seems right.

I unfortunately didn't have any other ammunition on hand, so I'm left guessing until my next range trip:

Is it possible that my gun just REALLY hates this brand/projectile?

I'm set up for reloading, and will actually probably be hitting my bench this evening to make some loads. But I'm just wondering if anyone's had similar issues...
 
Dude my Savage 10 FCPK hates them as well...

The only ammo I found that my Savage likes is the Federal premium 165 gr

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Argh! Thanks for the reply. I was freaking out a little. Because I was running 2 bags, and was really working the trigger well and not flinching, and damn I was printing huge groups.

Time to hit my bench I think! :p
 
I would prefer to think the ammo doesn't think much of the rifle. ;)

All rifles and all factory ammo don't always shoot well. All you can do is try different brands/weights and when you get a good combination stick with it.
 
greg11 said:
I took my Savage Precision Carbine out ...
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Dude! Thats your problem. Those words don't belong together in the same sentence. :D

Seriously, it has been known happen. Try a different brand, or even a different weight, and something will shake out.

Guntech beat me to it!


R.
 
Yeah They were the 1st type I tried at the range that day... Scared the sh!t out of me... I thought I had the worste gun in the world...
 
greg11 said:
I only brought with me a box of 180gr Remington Corelokts. [...]They sucked. [...]I'm talking 5-6MOA suck. [...snip...]Is it possible that my gun just REALLY hates this brand/projectile?
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That's at the outside edge of what one might get from factory ammo, but yes getting 5-6MOA accuracy out of otherwise functional ammo is a possibility.

Load up some known good bullets, especially match bullets that are known to be relatively forgiving (for example, any of the Sierra Matchkings, Nosler Ballistic Tips, etc); avoid for now the VLD-type bullets such as Hornady AMax series, Berger VLD, Lapua Scenar etc. These high performance VLD-types are very good bullets, but they sometimes can be really fussy. Take things one step at a time, get a decent load working with one of the "easy" bullets (just in case there is something wrong with your score, bedding barrel etc, you'll want to find this out sooner rather than later).

With one of these "forgiving" bullets, you can load to magazine length (2.800" COAL) and pretty much count on near-MOA performance, and sometimes a fair bit better than that.
 
if you can, find some Federal Gold Medal Match with 175gr SMK's and if your rifle still shoots ####ty with those then I'd talk to your dealer to see if he can figure out whats wrong
 
Hey RNBRA! I went ahead and bought 200 175 MatchKings and 200 180 Matchkings. I reloaded 20 175's this evening which I plan on trying out tomorrow. This is a test batch before I go crazy making a bunch of them.

You said the Matchking is a pretty forgiving projectile?

Also, I saw in another thread that, with respect to charge weights, you didn't put much stock in the idea that 0.2-0.3 of a grain mattered very much. I'm currently throwing H4895 with my Lee auto disk to within +/- 0.3 of a grain (based on a 15 samples). So, that's a swing of potentially 0.6 of a grain, on either extreme. Do I have much to worry about at 600 yards and under (not in terms of safety, as I'm well below max load according to my manual, just for my testing phase)?

And what's with the hate for the Savage 10PC? Barrel length, to my knowledge, has just about ZERO effect on "accuracy", correct? And, as far as I know, Savage builds a fine firearm. So, considering those two facts, what's with the grief?! :p

Something I don't know?

Now, I know it isn't an awesome $2500 gun. But for what it is, I think it's a nice piece. I guess time will tell though.
 
only remington ammo i have ever found that is nice is the 300 rum 180's. winchester power shok 150's shot well, federal fusion 150's, american eagle 150 grain shoots pretty decently too so ive found
 
I have a winchester model 70 that is 1" at a 100 meters no prob with sierra game kings and hornady interlocks BUT when shooting hornady SST's it is horrible! 3 1/4 to 4 1/4 groups with no wind and me feeling great about my shooting. I just posted a thread about it in the reloading forum. Got some helpful answers but I will go so far as to say "I HATE HORNADY SST's" mainly because I bought 200 of em thinking nothing of it only to find that no matter what change they suck in my gun. Good thing being I had other ammo that when shot confirmed my setup is solid, the ammo is the issue.
 
greg11 said:
Hey RNBRA! I went ahead and bought 200 175 MatchKings and 200 180 Matchkings. I reloaded 20 175's this evening which I plan on trying out tomorrow. This is a test batch before I go crazy making a bunch of them.

You said the Matchking is a pretty forgiving projectile?
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Yes SMKs are pretty forgiving. Let us know how your 175s and 180s shoot for you.

Also, I saw in another thread that, with respect to charge weights, you didn't put much stock in the idea that 0.2-0.3 of a grain mattered very much. I'm currently throwing H4895 with my Lee auto disk to within +/- 0.3 of a grain (based on a 15 samples). So, that's a swing of potentially 0.6 of a grain, on either extreme. Do I have much to worry about at 600 yards and under (not in terms of safety, as I'm well below max load according to my manual, just for my testing phase)?
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I have a more expensive powder measure than you do (hopefully better too, otherwise why did I spend the money? ;-). If I throw 50 charges of Varget (H4895 will be similar), the vast majority are no more than 0.2 grains away from the average charge weight (so I have a +/- 0.2 typical spread). But out of 50 throws, I usually see a 1.0 grain difference between the very lightest and very heaviest charge (it seems to be a "heavy tails" distribution). I willingly shoot this ammo out to 600 any time, all the time, including at the national matches. And given a well-tuned load (some of my loads are, some are not) these thrown charges can produce pretty darn competitive results at 1000 yards.

If your 100m or 600m group sizes are too big for your liking (say 1 MOA or bigger), it is almost certainly not a powder weight variation over a 0.5 grain interval that is responsible for the problem. Much likelier reasons are that you are using a bad bullet, or a good but picky bullet that you haven't yet found the right tune for, or your load is too hot, or your load is too mild, or there is something wrong with your scope, or your bedding, or your shooting technique, etc etc.

Be careful and conscientious using your Lee powder measure and scale (they take a lot of effort to get good results from). Until you buy better gear, put in the effort on them in order to get good results with them, and you will be fine.
 
I stopped using the auto disk measure for loading precision rifle ammo for two reasons: could not get enough cc in one throw and I found the accuracy was less than what I wanted to achieve. However I found that the lee balance beam scales are relatively consistent and fairly accurate (but like rnbra-shooter stated there is alot of effort to achieve this).

Justin
 
greg11 said:
And what's with the hate for the Savage 10PC? Barrel length, to my knowledge, has just about ZERO effect on "accuracy", correct? And, as far as I know, Savage builds a fine firearm. So, considering those two facts, what's with the grief?! :p

Something I don't know?

Now, I know it isn't an awesome $2500 gun. But for what it is, I think it's a nice piece. I guess time will tell though.
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:D I think it's just that it's a factory rifle. I have yet to have a poor shooting factory rifle, but they are out there (my poor shooter never fired a shot, it just went back). I had a Tikka Varmint that wouldn't shoot any factory ammo. Everything shot well over 1.5" at 100 yds. After a few frustrating range sessions I found two bullets that could shoot 0.25". It's the load that inspired me to hoard all those driving range balls.
 
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