Accuracy issue with Winchester Fail Safe ammo

1tfl

New member
Yesterday I took my hunting rifle and target rifle to the range... both are Remington 700 (BDL and PSS) in .308. With my hunting rifle I was getting the usual 2.00 to 2.75" groups at 200 yards using various factory hunting ammo. With my target rifle I was getting the usual 0.75 to 1.50" groups at same distance using Federal 168gr GMM. When I tried the Winchester 150gr Fail Safe ammo in the hunting rifle my first groups was 6.75" and second groups was 7.50". The first group from the target rifle was 5.75". I took a break and had some lunch and came back an hour later. I tried the Fail Safe ammo again in the hunting rifle and my first group was 7.00".

This ammo was purchased 10+ years ago when Winchester first started selling Fail Safe ammo. I purchased 5 boxes at the time as I was going to go Elk hunting following year. I never made it to the Elk hunt and the ammo was just sitting in the closet all that time. All 5 boxes have same lot number and I fired one or two rounds from each box to make sure. While the ammo is 10+ years old it was never kept cold or hot... boxes still look new.

Has anybody else had accuracy issues with original Winchester Fail Safe ammo?
 
No but I have a 1-10 twist in my .308 and use 180 grain bullets. 165 doesn't group well for me at all so it could be a bullet length/weight issue because I have quite a few friends with model 700's and they have no problems either.
 
I bought some FailSafe 150-grain bullets to load for my pet sub-MOA '06 about that time.

Retch, Son of Thing. "Group" is the wrong word. "Pattern" serves far better.

I read later that the FS bullets' jackets were/are harder than the regular jackets. Dunno if that were the cause or not. Didn't have any pressure signs on the primers...

Gunshop chatter indicated that south Georgia hunters quit using them because of a lack of expansion. But anecdotes ain't data.
 
Back
Top