I tried a mix of ammo today in my S&W 617 to get ready for our next Steel Challenge Match. My goal is to find accurate, reliable ammo that will extract easily from my chambers. I tried CCI Mini Mags, CCI Blazer, Remington Golden Bullet 1400 bucket, Wolf Me, Eley Force and Federal Auto Match.
I got a variety of conclusions and a few surprises. Mini Mags are very consistent in both accuracy
and reliability.attachFull1100231 They run very clean and in 200 rounds I did not have to clean the cylinders once. This may become my ammo of choice.
Blazers were actually the most accurate ammo. This is judging from off hand double action shooting at 15 yards. This is the distance I normally sight in at. All my shots were within 4 inches pulling straight through the trigger without staging it. After the 6th reload with my DS-10 speed loaders I had to run a brush through the cylinders because I started experiencing difficult extraction.
After cleaning my 617 with a bronze brush mounted on a portable hand drill, I run the brush through each cylinder for 20 seconds which makes it very clean, I tried Wolf ME. Surprisingly all the rounds fired on first try. Very accurate but again hard extraction. Good practice ammo but far from being my competition rounds.
Remington Golden Bullets are the surprise of the bunch. No miss fires with 140 rounds. Accuracy wasn't as tight as Mini Mags or Blazers but they ran well enough for me to consider them my go-to ammo.
Federal Auto Match was my go-to ammo until this year. I've had more clickers then I'd like to admit with at least 2 per hundred rounds. I know, with a revolver that's not bad because all you have to do is pull the trigger again and the next round will go off. The problem is that Steel Challenge is strictly a speed event and the second or two it takes to go past the miss fire is just too much to give away, Especially if it happens more than 2 per match.
I got a variety of conclusions and a few surprises. Mini Mags are very consistent in both accuracy
and reliability.attachFull1100231 They run very clean and in 200 rounds I did not have to clean the cylinders once. This may become my ammo of choice.
Blazers were actually the most accurate ammo. This is judging from off hand double action shooting at 15 yards. This is the distance I normally sight in at. All my shots were within 4 inches pulling straight through the trigger without staging it. After the 6th reload with my DS-10 speed loaders I had to run a brush through the cylinders because I started experiencing difficult extraction.
After cleaning my 617 with a bronze brush mounted on a portable hand drill, I run the brush through each cylinder for 20 seconds which makes it very clean, I tried Wolf ME. Surprisingly all the rounds fired on first try. Very accurate but again hard extraction. Good practice ammo but far from being my competition rounds.
Remington Golden Bullets are the surprise of the bunch. No miss fires with 140 rounds. Accuracy wasn't as tight as Mini Mags or Blazers but they ran well enough for me to consider them my go-to ammo.
Federal Auto Match was my go-to ammo until this year. I've had more clickers then I'd like to admit with at least 2 per hundred rounds. I know, with a revolver that's not bad because all you have to do is pull the trigger again and the next round will go off. The problem is that Steel Challenge is strictly a speed event and the second or two it takes to go past the miss fire is just too much to give away, Especially if it happens more than 2 per match.