AR loading and unloading for calling

S

SalemDawger

New member
When making calling stands with my AR, how often should I discard the round that I feed into my chamber? The cycling of the action, really scratches the bullet. I used the same round on 5 stands today and the last time I unloaded my gun the bullets looked awful. Does the cuts in the copper hurt accuracy?
 
I drop the first shell in the chamber and let the bolt ride closed. Make sure the shell starts into the chamber straight before you let the bolt ride closed. I put in the clip in after the shell in in the chamber. This way I don't scratch or ding any rounds. I don't think the dings and scratches will make any difference on accuracy anyway but it's just the way I do it. When I'm done hunting I pop the clip out & pull the bolt back to eject the chambered round. If your worried about noise like I am, load the first one in the vehicle before you get out. Make sure you point the muzzle were it will do the lest damage to our vehicle if it goes off for some dumb reason.
 
Susi_hunter,

Bear in mind that an AR was designed to have the first round loaded from the magazine. It could effect proper function and ejection to load it that way. Just a thought, you may never have an issue and it is not as important in a hunting situation vs. a life and death situation.
 
I must begg to differ. Thousands of times a year AR's are loaded with a single round during high power competition. The routine is to drop a round in the open port and let the bolt slam home. The round magicly finds it's way into the chamber. When I first got my AR I was told this and had to try it for myself. While in the field I did it from every angle possible, with the gun pointed down, with it sideways, pointed up, even upside down, every time the shell found it's way home and hit what I was shooting at. That is not saying that the case was always in perfect condition. Some angles were easier on the case than others with pointing down being the best. While hunting with the rifle I did find that the first shell was beaten pretty badly after a day of hunting. This shell was used on targets of oppertunity, cans, clumps of dirt, jack rabbits, when I did my job, the skuffed up, scared up bullet always found it's mark.
 
I understand what you are saying, but in high power competition you are firing a single shot. My point was it may not be the best method when you are counting on a 2nd round being chambered correctly and firing. With hunting worst that will happen is you won't get a follow up shot, and that isn't a big deal but in HD most consider it proper to load the chamber from the magazine.
 
I'm not baiting you with this question, it's an honest one.

How would single loading then dropping in a magazine make the second shot unreliable? Would it be the thought that the magazine would jam from a stacking problem?

..... Not to many years ago we had a very similar post related to single loading an M1 Garand, the answer was about the same, in high power comeptition Garands are single loaded the majority of the time with no side effects. There were thos that wanted to continue to argue that one. The AR is a different beast though, you aren't going to load a full "clip" behind the chambered round in a Garand like you will a "Detachable box magazine" (I worded that very carefully for the technical guys that like to point out the difference between a "Clip" and a "magazine") in an AR.
 
I completely agree with you and I honestly believe that 99.9% of the time it would load and function properly. I have a buddy in the Army that is an armorer and he and I had this debate, now granted he is indoctrinated and firmly believes the rifle will fail if loaded in this manner. According to him, and this is what i am basing my info on with a little bit of extra reading as well, in a firearm that is designed to be loaded from a magazine, it should be chambered from the magazine to ensure proper seating of the bolt and to make sure it will eject correctly. He said that Glocks have had failures when breach loaded vs. magazine loaded.

Definitely don't want to argue about this anymore because it isn't that important to me. But in a hunting scenario when you already have a loaded magazine i would think it would be easier to just insert the mag and charge the weapon vs. hand loading and then inserting a mag.
 
Here is the short answer to your question. I have heard that there may be a problem with proper ejection, but never had the problem myself.
 
True about the ease of loading from a loaded mag., but I did notice that the round shows less damage (the question in this post) if dropped into the chamber first. In the long run it doesn't really make any difference though, other than the looks of the shell, a dinged up shell will still do the job on a coyote.
 
I'm in the military and our training has always stressed to not RIDE the bolt forward. If you're loading singles and letting the bolt SLAM forward, I don't think you'll have any issues. I still pop in a full magazine and slap the bolt release. Something about that sequence just gets me in the mood.

Why are you unloading between stands? We normally load up in the morning and don't unload until we've made the last stand of the day. Most of our hunting is on ATVs, but even if we're in the truck we keep one in the chamber. I understand there are always safety issues, but Gene and I are always cautious with our weapons. I know some states require you to have an empty weapon while transporting. Is that your predicament?
 
Salem, if you are really worried about it, and I'm not saying one way or another on the accuracy part, I would just try switching out rounds when you load/unload. You know, take the one you just ejected and stick it in your pocket, replace it with a fresh one.

Or cycle the next round in on the next stand, pull the mag back out and stick the shell from the last stand back in the mag.

Might wind up with 3 or 4 one time chambered rounds at the end of the day, but one good stand, or being a lousy shot like I am, and you can get rid of those in a hurry /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
As an M16 / AR15 armorer I have to chime in on this one. First off the marks and scratches on the bullet itself probably will not effect accuracy to a noticable degree. I have personaly fired rounds where the lead tip of the SP ammo was badly deformed and the copper was noticably scratched but it went to POA like the rest.

As far as the rifle goes. Single loading one round at a time or loading a round then inserting the magazine SHOULDN'T effect the function of the rifle. There are however many other factors that COULD contribute to a malfunction of a rifle loaded in this manner. The biggest factor is DO NOT insert a fully loaded magazine of any capacity under a bolt closed on a manually inserted round. Always under load your magazine at least one round I practice and teach down loading 2 rounds, ie 18 in a 20 or 28 in a 30. My personal 5 round hunting magazines from Bushmaster will not function if there are 5 rounds in them. So...I load the mag with 4 and load one in the chamber by hand for hunting.

An AR shooter will have more function problems due to bad magazines, weak ammo short stroking, loose gas key or other gas system issues than from loading a single round by hand.

Lastly inspect the unfired round ejected from the chamber before loading it a subsequent time to ensure that the bullet was not pushed deeper into the case as this condition COULD result in a pressure increase and cause some other problems.

YMMV.
 
I would say you need to take a look at the area were your round feeds up into the chamber, for scratches, or burrs, then inspect the chamber for burrs left from the chamber reamer. The only time I have seen a round get damaged was due to a missfeed.
I have done two tours in Iraq. Went outside the wire everyday on my second tour. Prior to leaving the wire went condition 1 once back inside the wire between firm bases 2-4 times a day went condition 4 (unloaded)every time, and never damaged a round, reguardless of how it was loaded or unloaded.
I have a RRA M4, unload it all the time and never see any damage to the round
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You may have some issues with the weapon.

Can you take a picture of one of these rounds, and post it so I can see what your talking about.
 
Your AR will be fine. The big difference here is that the AR system always has the extractor jump the case rim. On a Glock or other semi auto handgun system, the case rim slides up under the extractor when properly loaded from a magazine. Manually inserting the round into the Glock, XD, 1911, etc. will cause the extractor to jump over the rim and WILL eventually cause problems with extractor spring tension and start failures to extract. As you can see, the systems are set up differently. Manually Load Away.
DaFUnk
 
I had the similar problem with mine leaving scratches/gouges in the bullet.

The problem is partly caused by the feed ramps scratching the ogive of the bullet when being fed up the ramp to the chamber.

The other problem is bullet length and ogive design I found while seating different bullets in search of the answer.

Some times the scratches were not too bad and other times it brought concern to me personally.

I did notice that the lesser scratched bullets came from one side of the magazine for what reason I don't know.

I took a very small 1/2 round fine tooth file and filed down the feed ramp into the upper receiver giving the ramp a longer runway if you will.

Scratches were half of the severity they were when I started.

I cleaned the chamber and bore after each filing till I was satisfied with the bullet.

Hope this may help you out some. If you are not capable of doing this: LET A GUNSMITH DO IT FOR YOU!!!!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
Riding the bolt home can result in out of battery firing. It's not recommended, let the bolt slam home just as it would when chambering a round from a newly inserted magazine. Don
 
If I was having this problem, I would want to know why the bullets were getting scratched up. My RRA doesn't make a mark on any bullets or case. I do get a slight primer mark from the firing pin that will get slightly more pronouced the more times it's loaded. I think you may have a burr in the feed path, defective magazine, etc. Does this only happen with a certain magazine type, and does it only happen to the top cartridge or all cartridges from the magazine? I don't believe a properly setup AR-15 should damage the rounds as you describe. Loading down one or two cartridges is really a way of compensating for variables in magazines in battle or tactical situations. Good magazines are critical to smooth feeding in all semi or full autos.
 


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