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Tired of swinging by the ammo counter at Wally World every day just to check and see if they have anything in stock? This video below shows you how you can track the inventory of your local Wal-Mart without having to physically go to the store.
Apparently it is browser specific, but does still work. Give it a whirl.
Edit:
It works!
What happens when a new shooter firing my M82A1 skipped a .50 BMG round off of the ground 250 yards short of the target.
Remington has issued a recall for certain lots of its 250 grain Scenar Match ammunition. If you have .338 Lapua, check for the lot numbers outlined in the press release below.
Product Safety Recall Notice
Warning – Do Not Use
Remington 338 Lapua Magnum
250 Grain Scenar Match Ammunition Lot Nos. L13SA29L, L13SA29R, L13SB29L, or L13SB29R
Remington has determined the above lots may have been improperly loaded. Improper loading may cause malfunctions which may result in damage to the firearm, serious personal injury or death.
DO NOT USE
Remington 338 Lapua Magnum 250 Grain Scenar Match Ammunition Lot Nos. L13SA29L, L13SA29R, L13SB29L, or L13SB29R
To identify Lot numbers:
For CASES, the Lot Number is stenciled on the outside of the case; and,
For BOXES, the Lot Number is stamped on the inside flap of the box.
If you have any of the ammunition identified above, immediately discontinue use and contact Remington at 1-800-243-9700, Prompt #3. We will arrange for return shipment and, upon receipt, will send replacement ammunition at no cost.If you are unsure if you have one of these Lots or if you have mixed boxes of ammunition, please immediately discontinue use and contact Remington.
For any consumer questions or instructions on how to return product, contact the Consumer Service Department at 1-800-243-9700, Prompt #3.
$34.06/1000 primers, including tax. Considering you don’t have to pay the Hazardous Materials fee, that’s not a bad price really. They also had powders, shotgun hulls (new and once fired) along with shot there. No bullets or brass. Still, it’s progress.
Found here: Omega Watches
Most of us have seen videos online of “tactical” instructors teaching “Big Boy Rules” where someone is standing down range during live fire. Despite your thoughts on this, it’s almost universally a bad idea because things can and do go wrong, no matter how well trained the firearm operator is.
Case in point: Over the weekend I joined Ambulance Driver, Farm Dad and Farm Mom, Jennifer, and Evyl Robot at the Central Oklahoma Gunblogger Schutenfest. I had my AR-15 out there and we were banging steel at distances from 100-450 yards. Most of my shots were dead on, but every once in a while I spotted a round impacting the ground halfway between my shooting position and the target.
When that happens once, it’s easy to assume that it’s operator error and that the shot was pulled. But it happened again, and again, even when I know I called my shots reliably. So, I pulled out the chronograph and ran some rounds through it.
The first shot through the trap clocked in at 1173 FPS. This was XM855 Green Tip ammo, and typical muzzle velocity is in the neighborhood of 3,000 FPS. The next shot through the chrony clocked in at a more typical speed of 2895 FPS. The next one was normal as well, but then the fourth shot again clocked in at 1125 FPS.
I had found the source of my problems: a bad batch of ammo.
We were only shooting at steel, and nobody was down range. But if someone had been, the 15mph cross wind we were contending with could have easily blown the slower round off target and put someone in danger.
No matter how good the shooter is, things can and do go wrong. If you follow basic firearm and range safety, nobody gets hurt. If you don’t, people can be put in danger.
50 BMG jacket we recovered from the berm.
If you’re a preparedness minded individual like myself, you probably have a well stocked larder, ample survival gear, and a few ammo cans full of rifle and handgun ammunition. But if Uncle and NJT are wrong, and the Zombie Apocalypse happens, AND if it turns out that shotguns ARE the best tool to put down brain eating shamblers, I’m going to be woefully short on ammo. The one thing I’ve not seen for sale in, well, ever, is replicas relojes bulk defensive shotgun ammunition.
Sure, you can buy a case of 12 gauge loads, but I’ve only ever seen Dove, Waterfowl, and trap or skeet loads available by the case. I’m sure you CAN get bulk 00 buckshot loads or slugs, but for the life of me I can’t think of a good source.
So, does anyone have a good (and cheap) source for full-power 12 gauge 00 buck loads and/or slugs?
Whether you’re hiking a trail in bear country, or simply resting at home, having a firearm for personal protection is something everyone should consider. There are many schools of thought as to what constitutes an appropriate home defense, concealed carry, or trail gun, and just as many options available for purchase.
 Mom commented after firing the PMR-30 that “…this is the perfect gun for me. It makes little holes, but it can make 30 of them. And it doesn’t beat me up.” |
Debates over the “perfect” handgun caliber have raged on for dozens of years. Is it better to have a caliber that begins with “.4” or is the 9mm “Euro-pellet” sufficient when topped with modern expanding hollowpoints? Many seek to find the perfect “man-stopper,” “bear medicine,” or basically any bullet capable of a “one-shot stop” but they’re more likely to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that’s been crapped out by a unicorn. Such a cartridge simply does not exist.
Still, millions of dollars have been spent on countless studies analyzing the effectiveness of various calibers. The result has been a few exotic cartridges, few of which have ever made it into large-scale production. In the past 30 years the 10mm, .40 S&W, and .357 Sig have been the only handgun cartridges that have reached any level of prominence and, of those three, the .40 S&W is the only caliber to come anywhere close towards becoming as common as the 9mm or .45 ACP.
As with handguns, thousands of words and millions of dollars have been spent determining the suitability of the 5.56/.223 caliber “poodle shooter” versus any number of larger rifle cartridges, and even more hybrid and wildcat rounds have been spawned by this debate than were ever conceived of by the 9mm and .45 brouhaha. Still, by virtue of its use by the US military, not to mention the performance of the round, the 5.56/.223 caliber remains one of the more common rifle chamberings, and thousands of hunters pursuing everything from varmints to white tailed deer have proven its efficacy in the field.
What is not often considered is the person who will be utilizing the firearm. Many people neglect the human element. Having a revolver that can drop a bear with a single well-placed shot is admirable, but can just anyone pick up a .44 Magnum, .454 Casull, or .500 S&W chambered revolver and be proficient with it? A 12 gauge may work well for home defense but how many people, with little or no training, can accurately fire multiple rounds of full-power 00 buck loads?
Perhaps the perfect example of the wrong solution being over-hyped is the ultra-lightweight .38 Special/.357 Magnum snub nosed revolver, which is often wrongly promoted as the perfect weapon for a small woman. It’s easily concealable, and the double-action is reliable, but accuracy is sub-par at best, and it kicks hard enough to make even the most ardent seekers of “recoil-therapy” reconsider firing off more than a couple dozen rounds at a stretch. I know very few women who will tolerate hard hitting firearms (with the notable exception of Jennifer, who is just, odd when it comes to recoil).
Put a hard hitting pistol or rifle in the hands of many women, and almost all new shooters, and you’ll find their taste for the shooting sports quickly sours. That’s no way to gain new shooters and, for someone seeking a gun for self-defense, is a great way to convince them that there are many other things they’d rather do instead of run a few hundred rounds through the firearm while training.
And then we come to my own mother. Mom is not someone who I would consider old, though I suppose she’s getting there, nor infirm, though she has a few problems here and there that have left her on disability. Mom never has spent as much time at the range as I do, has only owned a gun on a few occasions, and never carried one for self-defense. In addition, she has problems with her hands that make it difficult for her to manipulate a stiff double-action trigger, and intense recoil leaves her wrists or shoulder sore and her nerves frayed.
 The FN Five-seveN, AMT Automag II, and Kel-Tec PMR-30 are all low recoil semi-automatic handguns that can function as trail guns or self-defense handguns. |
When it came time to find Mom a suitable pistol, rifle, and shotgun, low recoil was an absolute priority. This meant that a number of standard firearms were immediately tossed out. The pump action 12 gauge, favored by many for home defense, was simply too much gun. Instead, a semi-automatic 20 gauge was more appropriate. When outfitting Mom for hunting season, we skipped the .30 caliber rifles completely and went straight to the 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser and .223 AR-15, both of which are more than capable of taking deer and feral hog alike.
And pistols? Pistols are, and always have been, a study in compromise. In reality, anything a pistol can do, a rifle or shotgun can do better. So why the big fuss over caliber when it comes to pistols?
It’s not uncommon for a rifle to fail to yield a “one shot stop” even with a well placed round. I’ve seen deer, hogs, elk, and all manner of medium and large game run for hundreds of yards, sometimes even miles, despite a fatal wound. Stories abound of bears and moose who charge and injure or even kill a hunter, only to later fall dead from a lung or heart shot.
Can we really expect a pistol to reliably stop a determined attacker, no matter what the caliber? Of course not.
At the end of the day it is far more important to have a gun, any gun really, and preferably one that you can use accurately, and that you have trained with extensively. When I took Mom to the range, I didn’t give her a snub-nosed .357 Magnum, nor did I give her a semi-automatic .40, .45 ACP, 9mm, or even a .38 Special. Instead, we started out with .22 Long Rifle and worked our way up, next to the .22 Magnum and eventually to the 5.7×28.
 Mom fires a 5.56mm AR-15, another low recoil firearm suitable for both hunting and self-defense. |
Both the .22 Magnum and 5.7×28 were easy shooting cartridges that Mom, despite her aversion to recoil, could shoot all day long. And on top of that, she was deadly accurate with them. No flinches, no jerking of the trigger, just round after round put on target in a tight little group at distances up to 25 yards away. In the case of the PMR-30, that meant she had 30 rounds in a tight group about the size of a softball right in the center-of-mass.
Caliber isn’t everything. My friend Caleb proved that a cup of Starbucks’ brew and a .25 ACP Jetfire pistol can be exactly what is needed to dissuade a goblin. It’s been said that a .25 ACP may be great to carry when you don’t have a gun, but in this case it did the trick.
Even if you are forced to rely upon the ballistic performance of a particular firearm, when avoiding the conflict doesn’t work and merely the threat of force fails, whether it be against a criminal assault or a bruin who thinks you’re in their territory, small caliber firearms can work, especially when you can put more rounds down range faster. FBI statistics even show that more firearm-related deaths are caused by the lowly .22 LR than by any other caliber. That’s primarily due to the prevalence of guns chambered for the round, but it goes to show how effective it can be.
Dave Sevigny once told me to “just get the biggest caliber you can hit with or the one you’re most comfortable with,” and I think that’s key. For some people, that means a magnum rifle cartridge and a 10mm handgun. For Mom, that means a Five-seveN or .22 Magnum pistol for self-defense, and a .223 or 6.5×55 rifle for hunting.
A few weeks back, AmongTheLeaves.com was contacted by Lucky Gunner to see if we’d be interested in reviewing some of their ammunition on this little website.
Free ammo? Here, twist my arm a little.
Naturally I agreed, and sent them a list of featured articles I was working on for the next few months. Not long after that, a box of 240 grain .44 Magnum Fiocchi “Pistol Shooting Dynamics” ammunition showed up on my doorstep. Sweet! Hunting season was just around the corner, and this year, instead of using a rifle, I’d already made the decision to hunt deer and feral hog alike with a pistol.
My firearm of choice, a Ruger Redhawk, has a 7.5″ barrel with a 1:20″ twist rate, and is topped off with fiber optic sights. The contrasting red and green dots make it very easy to get a clear shot, even in the dusky conditions just before and after sunset. The long barrel gives a longer sight radius for increased accuracy, while allowing for more complete powder burn and higher muzzle velocities.
The 240 grain ammo is a little lighter than I prefer for hunting, and Fiocchi isn’t well known in the US market as a manufacturer of quality hunting ammunition, but I figured “What the heck. It’s free ammo, let’s see how it does.” The first step I took in evaluating the ammunition was to try and figure out what type of bullet it was loaded with. Other than the fact that it was labeled as weighing 240 grains and that it was quite obviously a hollow point, no other information was on the box or website. I can’t say for sure, but it looked for all the world to me that it was a Hornady XTP, or else something very similar (and if anyone help me figure out the bullet manufacturer with any certainty, I’d appreciate it). If indeed it is an XTP, any shooter would do well to use this cartridge. The Hornady XTP is well known for its accuracy and is favored by hunters for the superior expansion characteristics it exhibits.
 4 shot group fired kneeling, off-hand, at 50 yards using iron sights. |
Normally, at this point in the review, I’d pull a few bullets and weigh the bullet and the powder charge. That gives an indication of both accuracy and consistency. But, with only 50 rounds to review, I thought it prudent to save the few I had, as we’re planning on doing more than just a range review.
These are hollow points, and as such are intended for self-defense and/or hunting. Since .44 Magnum handguns aren’t commonly used as defensive firearms, and since Among The Leaves primarily focuses on hunting and the outdoors, we’re going to proceed along that path.
Texas white tailed deer and feral hogs are the two medium sized game animals that I pursue here in the Lone Star State. Texas white tails are small and slender compared to those found in the rest of the country, and are easily dropped with as little as a .357 Magnum or 10mm handgun and a well placed shot. Wild pigs are built a bit more stoutly, but can still be taken using similar loads with shots that don’t have to penetrate the thick shield and shoulder blade.
Still, all things being equal, if using a handgun cartridge such as .44 Magnum, more is better. To that end, I developed my own heavy “buffalo bore” load that can generate over 2,000 ft-lbs of muzzle energy by launching a 320 grain bullet at speeds exceeding 1,700 feet per second. At short distances, this allows it to hit nearly as hard, if not harder, than a .45-70 Trapdoor, and with significantly more energy than any .30-30. That’s more than enough to take almost any medium or large game animal in North America.
 The 320 grain handloads have substantially more recoil than the lighter 240 grain Fiocchi hollow points. |
Now, to my way of thinking, the more energy I can (safely) get out of my .44 Magnum loads, the better. If I manage to get a shot on a big porker, I don’t want to have to wonder if it’s got enough “oompf” to knock down the hog. So, when I saw that the ammunition I had received was a standard 240 grain hollow point, I was a bit apprehensive. Would it be enough to take a large wild boar?
It was time to head to the range. The first step was to chronograph both the Fiocchi alongside my handloads. The testing was conducted in a pistol bay, with the chronograph 10 yards from the muzzle.
320 grain SSK Truncated Cone .44 Mag handloads:
Shot 1: 1692
Shot 2: 1712
Shot 3: 1698 FPS (2085 ft-lbs ME)
240 grain Hornady XTP .44 Mag Fiocchi
Shot 1: 1679 FPS (1561 ft-lbs ME)
Shot 2: 1684
Shot 3: 1671
The results from the chronograph are more or less what one would expect from a 240 grain .44 Magnum load. The median result from our very small sample gives us a measured velocity of 1,679 feet per second, and a calculated muzzle energy of 1,561 foot-pounds. I was a bit surprised to find that, though our 3-shot sample was too small to draw any solid conclusions from, the Fiocchi ammunition seemed to have a more consistent velocity than my hand loads.
After testing the loads on the chronograph, I did some accuracy testing. So to speak. Ideally, ammunition accuracy is tested from a machine rest like a Ransom Rest to eliminate any other variables that could affect the test. I don’t have a Ransom Rest (check them out: they’re pricey, but fantastic for handgun accuracy testing), and we’re going to be using this ammo for hunting, not for shooting a match. Instead, I replicated what most handgun hunters are likely to experience and fired from a kneeling position at 50 yards using iron sights. The ammo grouped adequately for this purpose. At 6.25″, it wasn’t the prettiest group, but then I’m looking for “minute of deer” not “minute of angle” and for that, it’s fine.
The Hornady XTP bullet is well known for it’s accuracy, consistency, and rapid expansion. I’ve found that in these Fiocchi cartridges, it remains a viable choice for hunting. As I mentioned earlier, Fiocchi is not known as a manufacturer of quality hunting ammo. Priced at $0.62 a round (on average, based on market prices October 2011) it costs far less than similar cartridges, and can be perceived as a budget load. Other budget brands have ammunition that is inconsistent, prone to failure, and extremely dirty. Fiocchi’s .44 Magnum ammunition is none of these things. Based on my experience so far, it performs as well if not better than other premium brands.
For the average hunter, Lucky Gunner’s 240 grain .44 magnum loads from Fiocchi are everything they’ll need. They’re accurate, and consistent, possibly even more consistent than my handloads, and that consistency is important for hunters when figuring how much the bullet will drop over a given distance.
But the testing of this ammunition isn’t complete just yet. Deer season opens this weekend for firearm hunters, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to bring home some venison or a bit of wild pork. Keep an eye out for more about this ammunition here on AmongTheLeaves.com.
FTC disclaimer: I didn’t get paid a damn thing to write this, but they did send me the ammunition for free. That was nice of them.
