SShooterZ
New member
I've seen people ask who/what makes Midway's blemished bullets so I thought I would share a recent experience.
Purchase a 1000 of the .224 caliber 50 grain Poly Tip BTs about 6-8 months ago to use on prairie dogs. I was fully expecting them to be Hornady VMax/ZMax and that is exactly what they are.
Now the interesting part. When I was seating them into some .223 rounds I loaded up recently, I noticed that some of them didn't have a fully formed "boat tail" on them. I marked those to see how they would perform vs. the bullets that looked just like my factory boxed 50 grain V-Max. It wasn't a large percentage, but I marked 3 out of the 25 I shot. Weight wise, they all seemed consistent at 50 grains but I didn't not weigh a large sample set. Just wanted to confirm that both forms were the same weight.
Accuracy wise, they made quite a difference. At 100 yards shooting through a Remington 700 Varmint in .223 using WC 846 and LC Brass, I would get groups to increase by about an inch over the groups with the "normal" bullets. This gun has less than 100 rounds down it and this is all load development. Overall I think I am on to some promising loads and looking forward to doing some more shooting with this gun.
The rounds that didn't appear "deformed" shot excellent with some solid 1/2-3/4" groups. Very happy with those.
But I thought I would share just in case people had a similar batch or experience. I expected the different in form would make somewhat of a difference, just not as big as it did.
Here is the label on the package:
Here is a bullet with a malformed "boat tail".
Here is what a "normal" bullet looks like.
Here is a comparison shot. Malformed on top, normal on the bottom.
Here is the target.
Lower right target had 2 of these bullets and the upper left had 1. In fact, that large hole in the lower right was 3 shots in almost the same hole. Amazing what a difference in bullet formation did to that group.
Interesting lesson for me and one I thought I would share.
Purchase a 1000 of the .224 caliber 50 grain Poly Tip BTs about 6-8 months ago to use on prairie dogs. I was fully expecting them to be Hornady VMax/ZMax and that is exactly what they are.
Now the interesting part. When I was seating them into some .223 rounds I loaded up recently, I noticed that some of them didn't have a fully formed "boat tail" on them. I marked those to see how they would perform vs. the bullets that looked just like my factory boxed 50 grain V-Max. It wasn't a large percentage, but I marked 3 out of the 25 I shot. Weight wise, they all seemed consistent at 50 grains but I didn't not weigh a large sample set. Just wanted to confirm that both forms were the same weight.
Accuracy wise, they made quite a difference. At 100 yards shooting through a Remington 700 Varmint in .223 using WC 846 and LC Brass, I would get groups to increase by about an inch over the groups with the "normal" bullets. This gun has less than 100 rounds down it and this is all load development. Overall I think I am on to some promising loads and looking forward to doing some more shooting with this gun.
The rounds that didn't appear "deformed" shot excellent with some solid 1/2-3/4" groups. Very happy with those.
But I thought I would share just in case people had a similar batch or experience. I expected the different in form would make somewhat of a difference, just not as big as it did.
Here is the label on the package:
Here is a bullet with a malformed "boat tail".
Here is what a "normal" bullet looks like.
Here is a comparison shot. Malformed on top, normal on the bottom.
Here is the target.
Lower right target had 2 of these bullets and the upper left had 1. In fact, that large hole in the lower right was 3 shots in almost the same hole. Amazing what a difference in bullet formation did to that group.
Interesting lesson for me and one I thought I would share.
