Beware .30cal Winchester Ammo

[WoodsieEC]

Due to the ongoing brass shortage of certain calibers in South Africa and limited time, I had to buy factory ammo.

Winchester was the cheapest and only thing locally I could find in 300WSM. My mate and I bought 3 boxes of ammo each, so that we could start shooting. The cost of 3 boxes was cheaper than the odd find of ADG or Peterson brass for 50 cases. I was aware that the Winchester brass would not be as good as the others mentioned but besides it being cheaper, I had 60 ready to go rounds. The arrival of my new rifle and an end of season hunt coincided and I didn't have time to develop a new load - another reason for grabbing the factory ammo.

While confirming our zeros on the farm, we found that we were unable to close our bolts on certain rounds. Not a stick bolt but a bolt that probably required a little bit of boot, if you really wanted to close it.
Between 4 boxes of ammo, we had 34 rounds that we could not use - luckily we took 2 boxes each or we wouldn't have been able to hunt.

On our return, we checked the ammo and found that the cases were out of spec.
When I took the boxes back to our local GS he showed me a crate of Winchester ammo boxes that previous customers all had issues with. All of the ammo was 300win mag and 308. These were the 1st boxes of 300WSM that he had seen.

I kept the ammo and pulled the heads, bumped the shoulder back to the same measurement as the rounds that fitted. Replaced the powder and head - All good to go now.

[Brendank]

Seems Winchester's QC problems are coming back to haunt them. I really hope this doesn't extend to their Ranger line.

[SSP]

Seems Winchester's QC problems are coming back to haunt them. I really hope this doesn't extend to their Ranger line.

Again.