.303 British Ammo

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voodoo54

New member
Anybody know what's going on with .303 British surplus ammo? Is there nobody exporting it anymore or has it simply dried up? I have a Lee Enfield sporter with about 300 rounds but I'm afraid to shoot it up if there's nothing coming in other than $1.00 per round Soft Points. Any info would be great, thanks.
 
good luck finding it. And what you do find, it will prolly be VERY corrosive... best bet, reload your own. I do. Saves a ton of $
 
I have had decent luck finding privi partizan at one of my local gun shops who keep a stock in it , I even find a few boxes of Remington at Bass Pro from time to time when I ask them why it is not on order and has an empty home on the shelf. There is always mail order though if you find yourself in a .303 deadzone. Both sources though local to me at a cost of about .78 cents per shot
 
Until about six or eight weeks ago, the Gunbroker ammo seller in Stillwater, OK listed two cases of POF for about .40 per round.
The lowest-quality, unpredictable .303 for a high price...before shipping :rolleyes:.

It was listed for several months.
After that time I never saw it again on "Gunbroker", "Ammo" nor any more bulk POF.
most sellers' :cool:(so-called "0 bid") prices for most .303 on Gunbroker are mostly an insult. They assume that we all
"just fell off the back of the turnip wagon".

The same seller in Stillwater has displayed many cases/crates of x54R with Cyrillic lettering in his storage area.
 
Thanks for the info guys. Looks like surplus .303 British has pretty much gone the way of the dodo except for some rare cases. Oh well, looks like I won't be shooting my Lee Enfield very often.:(
 
The only .303 surplus that seems to turn up anymore comes in greenish colored 32-round boxes (probably the POF stuff that Ignition Overdrive mentioned). Don't waste you money as it terribly corrosive, inaccurate, and hangfires like a Brown Bess. Your best bet for high-volume .303 shooting at this point would probably be to buy a couple hundred rounds of Prvi Partizan, save the brass, and get some neck sizing dies (brass doesn't last very long when full-length sized and shot out of a Lee-Enfield).
 
as already menioned, prvi makes good .303 ammo and the brass is good quality for reloading. when the last of the Kynoch surplus dried up, i started useing the prvi. good stuff and the price isn't bad either.
 
I managed to save all my 303 brass from years of shooting until I started reloading. And since I am a part-time RSO, I get to poach any 303 brass left at the benches when I'm working. :D
Now, I load my own.
 
Before I started reloading I bought something like 780 rounds of the POF crap from Sportsmans Guide. The price was reasonable, It must have been under $200. Yes, it hangfires like crazy and is incredibly inaccurate. And it is corrosive. I hold onto it for contingency and only shoot it in a 1948 GRI Enfield with a pitted throat. It is my end of the world ammo.

It's really junk. If it were boxer primed, I'd pull every bullet, pop all the primers and reload the brass. But its not so every once in a while I shoot it to hear a big bang, but I don't worry about hitting the paper.
 
why is everyone shocked that the supply of surplus 303 is finally just about GONE? why has no one been able to realize that because the factories stopped making it for the uk military and its colonial slaves, that the supply is finite and in the very end will consist of nothing but the worst trash that never would have made the cut for use in 1942?
 
could 30-40 krag brass work?

I seem to recall a 303 is damn near identical in dimensions to 30-40 krag, so much so that the krag will chamber in a 303, is is it the other way around?
 
could 30-40 krag brass work?
Click to expand...

Yes and here's some info: http://www.303british.com/id37.html

Many reloaders trim their brass to minimum dimensions according to SAAMI specs. A better method is to make a chamber cast and accurately determine the maximum case length for your particular rifle. I have two Lee Enfield No.4s that have chambers of 2.26" in length. That's a full .05" longer than the standard trim to length for the .303 British of 2.21". For these I select over length brass and trim cases to a uniform 2.25. On way to get longer than average .303 British cases is to reform .30-40 Krag brass. The Krag cartridge is nearly identical except about .2" longer than the .303 case, and can be run through a .303 sizing die, then fire formed in your chamber. I often fire form untrimmed Krag brass using a light charge of pistol powder such as Unique and then fill the case with an inert filler like Cream O Wheat. Cases formed in this way will show the actual length of chamber (impressed into the expanded case neck) of your rifle and can then be trimmed to fit it precisely. The longer cases are more accurate with lead slugs because they support the bullet better as it enters the rifling's leade. (Krag brass is slightly larger at the head, and reformed as .303 British will also eliminate the unsightly bulge that .303 cases often show in large-chambered rifles) Cast bullet loads do not usually cause much case stretching, (especially if you have tightened up your headspace) but I check my extra-long cases every time I reload them, just to be sure.
Click to expand...
 
Well I guess it is time to get the good ol' loading press out. The problem there is what a mil. .303 chamber does to the brass anyway. Unless you neck size or something.
 
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