icebear
Sako-addicted
This is so stupid, it's almost funny. I've bought lots of ammo for my .222 Sakos at gun shows. Most of it has been Remington and most of it has been NOS factory ammo in shelf-worn boxes. Well, today I grabbed a box of what appeared to be NOS Remington ammo to sight in a couple of Sakos that I had recently mounted scopes on. Got on the firing line, loaded five rounds in an L461 .222, and the first round wouldn't chamber. Say what? Ejected it, chambered and fired the second round. Then I worked the bolt again and the third round wouldn't chamber. At this point I figured something had to be wrong and took a close look at the ammo. To my surprise and annoyance, half the ammo in the box was .222 (mostly Federal) and half was .223/5.56. There were two rounds of PMC commercial .223 and eight rounds of assorted military 5.56, some of which appear to be reloads and one has a light primer hit. The one .222 round that wasn't Federal was a reload that hadn't been properly resized. See photo below.
The charitable (and most likely) explanation is that somebody who knew nothing about guns was cleaning up an estate, found the ammo loose in a drawer or box along with the Remington box, and put it all in the Remington box, not realizing that it wasn't all the same caliber. He/she then sold a large batch of stuff to a gun show dealer, who didn't check the contents of every apparently original box of ammo. The uncharitable explanation is that somebody pulled this stunt intentionally to get rid of some assorted loose ammo.
The half box of .222 worked well enough that I was able to use it to zero the scopes on my two rifles. The rest of it may be usable as well, except for the three obvious reloads. I'm not out a lot of money, but it shows that you can't take anything for granted when it comes to ammo. I have to say this is the first time anything like this has happened to me in a long time. The last such incident I remember was about 25 years ago when I bought a bag of .308 bullets at a show. When I went to load them in .30-30 cases, they wouldn't go in and crushed the case mouth. At that point I miked them and discovered they were 8mm/.323. I was able to relabel and resell them as 8mm, but I shudder to think what might have happened if they had been boattail bullets instead of flat base. I might well have been able to load them into .30 caliber cases, which would have made a real mess when I went to shoot them! The moral of the story is, check everything.
The charitable (and most likely) explanation is that somebody who knew nothing about guns was cleaning up an estate, found the ammo loose in a drawer or box along with the Remington box, and put it all in the Remington box, not realizing that it wasn't all the same caliber. He/she then sold a large batch of stuff to a gun show dealer, who didn't check the contents of every apparently original box of ammo. The uncharitable explanation is that somebody pulled this stunt intentionally to get rid of some assorted loose ammo.
The half box of .222 worked well enough that I was able to use it to zero the scopes on my two rifles. The rest of it may be usable as well, except for the three obvious reloads. I'm not out a lot of money, but it shows that you can't take anything for granted when it comes to ammo. I have to say this is the first time anything like this has happened to me in a long time. The last such incident I remember was about 25 years ago when I bought a bag of .308 bullets at a show. When I went to load them in .30-30 cases, they wouldn't go in and crushed the case mouth. At that point I miked them and discovered they were 8mm/.323. I was able to relabel and resell them as 8mm, but I shudder to think what might have happened if they had been boattail bullets instead of flat base. I might well have been able to load them into .30 caliber cases, which would have made a real mess when I went to shoot them! The moral of the story is, check everything.