I just found a bandoleer and open box full of leftovers from a case of 303 imported from some country that writes a lot of Arabic crap on the outside of the case. Ammo was 45 years old when it hit the shed that sees sub freezing weather in the winter and 100 degrees a few days in the summer, that was 15 years ago. A sampling of the open box found each made a big boom when asked to do so.
Not to pick on 5Whiskey, but here generates more questions... Folks opine fairly regularly about how they won't put full trust in a new carry firearm until X-number of rounds have gone through it, but how many of us are OK with only one clip of ammo that has a large number of candles on it's birthday cake?I would test a mag first, but after that I would trust 30+ year old ammo.
Don Fischer Seem's to me it would depend on how bad you needed it at the time. If you were in a bad situation and someone handed you a 30 yr old round for your gun, bet you'd try it! I can't see where much ammo of any kind would get all that old though, be fired in practice before it got there!