308 Surplus Ammo

[oddjob]

Spoke to a friend who used to shoot a lot of high power matches. He told me that surplus ammo has a seal around the bullet/case mouth for moisture reasons. He & his team would break the seal by seating the bullet deeper just a hair to break the seal. He stated the seal would have diffrent degrees/strengths and this would cause accuracy problems. Once the seal was broken the accuracy was pretty good. Anyone else hear of this?

[DMS42]

Yep. Used to do that all the time when I was shooting high power rifle on a Guard team. I quit doing it because I found that it didn't make any difference in my scores. At that time I had an Expert card. The Masters maybe could tell the difference at 600 and 1000 yards, but not me. The top guys also used to pull the bullets on the M118 Match ammo, neck size and then seat a Sierra 168 HBPT Match King for 600 yards. Some used the Mex Match across the course, but again as an Expert I couldn't tell the difference.

I don't think that breaking the seal will help much with most surplus ammo. And then only if you can shoot very good scores.