Reloaded hydrashok sold as new?

anton35

Inactive
I bought 9mm 126 grain hydrashoks and they look "old" to me (a novice).

They have all these brown "spots" and scratches" on the copper of the bullet possible from oxidation or possible from physical scratching.

Anyways, what would stop someone from reloading hydra shoks and selling them as new?

Is it true that Fexderal does not sell bullets for reload?
 
I don't know where you could even get Hydra Shock bullets as components to reload.
I believe Federal has discontinued the Hydra Shock. They now have the HST.
 
Getting bullets from Federal or anywhere else.

You would have to pull bullets from optimized rounds to make reloads....not real efficient.
 
Or you possibly did get reloads.
They're out there, sometimes disguised as new.
Anything that looks suspicious should be used with caution.
About the only way new ammo might have scratches and discoloring would be if they had been loaded into magazines or run in and out of the chamber.
 
HST counterfeit?

They look strange. I emailed Federal but they never answered.

I have pics but they this site only accepts jpegs at 244kb.


I will upload the pics on federal's Facebook page, bet they answer then.
 
Hydroshoks are outdated anyway. The HST round is the new hotness, been out for several years now.

While many other brands have good hollow point ammo, like Hornady and Speer, HSTs are kind of the standard for performance, as they are very reliable and predictable in gel tests, hitting the sweet spot pretty consistent.

Federal only keeps the hyroshok around, I suspect, due to the old farts still stuck in the 90s, and the young'uns who listen to their words on guns as gospel. It's not a bad round, but modern designs have surpassed them.


My preferred load is HST 124gr standard pressure. No need for +p with many of the new hollow point designs out now.


As far as uploading pics goes... There are apps that will shrink the file size. Problem is, unless you also shrink the dimensions as well, the pics look horrible low rez.

An easy way to get the pics the right file size, and make them fit on the screen when shown in a post... Is to use Microsoft Paint to edit them, using the resize function. Shrink them to around 15%, give or take, and the file size will be just under the max. They also fit cleanly on most people's screens when imbedded in a post.
 
Last edited:
I still use both Hi-Shok and Hydra-Shok, good ammo, no problems. Where did you get the ammo in question? Private sale, store, gun show?
 
you can buy them and roll your own, you just have to look for them! I've got 45 and 9mm from bullet salers as new and pulled!myself like to get the new over pulled. there great for range time. rockey mountaing reloading, americanreloading.com sale them
 
Last edited:
Depends on who you bought them from. They may have been sold by a l.e. agency to a liquidator. May have been sitting in weapons locker for 20 years.
 
You may have gotten department hand me downs. Many departments go through changes in rounds, many retire ammo, some and departments retire carry ammo after a short period if they choose not to practice with it. It's just not unusual to get your hands on old ammo. You didn't say how you got your hands on them, but the probability is that you just found some old ammo, ammo that wasn't properly handled in one or another way. There are millions of rounds of that ammo floating around in ammo boxes, glove compartments, car trunks,even kitchen drawers, maybe.

The possibility that someone handloaded them is very slim. The bullets were not widely released for handloaders, many other bullets have had this same policy. A very popular bullet is a premium product that should be kept exclusive and sold only in one dollar cartridges.

Take a close, critical look at the bases of the cases. If you don't see any marks from ejectors, or any other indications that they had been fired, I wouldn't worry. If you are lucky there will be red laquer on the primer.

I'm also going to say that it's not worth the worry. get rid of it if you suspect that it was handloaded. nobody's handloads are going into my guns, it's just a principle that I don't let anyone else control that. I don't even like buying a burrito at taco bell. Who knows who made it, what's in it?
 
^^^^
Ain't that the truth, on both counts.
One day I wandered into a gun shop where a friend was working.
He was busy pounding on the bolt handle of a hunting rifle with his trusty big wooden mallet.
He said it was better than just jumping up and down on the bolt handle (like starting his Harley) to unstick the round still in the chamber.
A customer had brought it in after trying to shoot a gun show reload.
As it turned out, the round was loaded way too long and with a too large of a diameter bullet.
But the rounds were cheap.
 
I bought gun show reloads ONCE. I was maybe twenty, just bought a pistol, and needed a box of hollow points. Stopped on the way home to see what the aiming point would be like. I fired a cylinder at about fifty feet, then fired out at the hill, 100 feet or more. Then the other end. Those rounds were dropping fifteen feet or so out there. It was just that right time of evening, I was shooting to the east, and with several rounds I could even see the twinkle of the copper bullet base. The only time I've ever seen that before was with bb guns. If I guessed, those rounds were shooting no faster than 5-600.

I'm not a trusting person anyway. I'm not entering into a transaction that is so important with a guy who literally peddled his wares out of the back of his truck. An exaggeration, yes, but essentially a fact.
 
Back
Top