So I got an email from Erik at AmmoMan, asking me if he were to send me a couple boxes of ammo, would I test them?
I’m just a poor corrupt blogger, so when people send me free stuff (especially ammo) in exchange for a link, who am I to turn it down? (Erik didn’t actually ask me for a link, but he’s getting one anyway.)
So a couple boxes of Federal’s Auto Match 40-grain ammo arrived at Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer, and off to DFW Range I went again. Here’s the ammo:
…fired as usual through my Marlin 880SQ:
Readers will remember my last test of Federal .22 ammo, so just for the hell of it I popped five rounds of the Federal Range ammo off, just to clear away the cobwebs and see if I hadn’t been imagining things when it came to its accuracy. I hadn’t.
This stuff is good — the “miss” at the bottom was a called flyer. Now for the Auto Match*:
…also with a called flyer at the bottom. Damn, this Auto Match stuff is also good. I fired off a few more 5-round strings into other targets, but with no appreciable difference.
So with that suspicion in mind, I found an old box (phew, at least ten years old) of Federal Match, and fired that too:
Wait… what? Another 5-round string:
Hmmm… I think Federal may have improved their .22 ammo quality over the past decade. But I’d hate to mislead anyone, so it looks like moar testing will be required… but as it stands right now, this ammo is very good — both the Auto Match and the Range variants.
Anyway, just for the hell of it, I’d also brought my Taurus Mod 62 for a little fun plinking.
So I loaded it up with the Federal Auto Match and fired off a few rounds, then got serious, and fired a seven-round string (why seven? that’s what was left in the tube magazine). This was offhand and unscoped into a (larger) target at 25 yards:
Ugh. Either I have to have that cornea surgery soon, or else it’s going to be scoped shooting for the rest of my life. That, or a lot more practice.
*Federal claims that the Auto Match ammo is designed especially for accurate semi-auto shooting. Well, I still don’t have a semi-auto .22 rifle, so I can’t test that claim. But it doesn’t matter — it works just fine in any rifle, as far as I can tell.