New batches of Winchester 17 wsm ammo

[Black Hog Down]

I called Savage the other day to try to exchange my skinny barrel BMag for a new bull barrel.

I told them the gun felt cheap and wouldn't shoot good groups.

He said they will exchange them if they don't shoot good but there was no fix for the chintsy stock.

He told me there was a problem with Winchester's ammo and the weight of powder was way off from round to round. He said that Winchester had slowed production down to fix it and they expected to be back to full production shortly.

He said until the new ammo ships, I should weigh my ammo and shoot groups with ammo of the same weight.

This is news to me. I guess the takeaway is that maybe the gun isn't total junk if this is true.

And more ammo may be available soon!

Anybody tried weighing their ammo?

[Hotolds442]

By weighing ammo, I'm getting groups in the .3's at 50 yards with my FV. I'll keep weighing even after they get their manufacturing process stabilized.

[Lonewulf]

some guys have been weighing theirs for a while, I have not. the last time I shot my original B-Mag I was getting 1 to 1-1/2 groups at 100 yards out of 4 different boxes of 25 grainers

[bremereric]

I just think they are pointing fingers :(

[scope eye]

I shot my Bmag this weekend and I got sub 1" groups, I did not have anything to measure with but it was a .80 to .90 MOA, when I got home I weighed a batch of 50 rounds and this is what I came up with on my RCBS Charge-master.

25 rounds 67.1
10 rounds 67.0
5 rounds 67.2
3 rounds 67.3
3 rounds 67.5
2 rounds 66.9
2 rounds 66.7

Dean

[sparky123321]

It's the ammo that's bad. I'm not to saying that the Bmag is any high-end rifle by any means and the stock is the worst I ever seen. A shooter tested some 17WSM ammo with that high-end Browning rolling block rifle and the groups were just as bad as many have experienced with the Bmag. You can't just slap a bullet on top of a nail gun blank and call it a day. They obviously needed to rework that production line, especially the powder charge station, before attempting to produce high quality rifle ammo. I'm guessing that's what they're doing now, probably under pressure from Savage, and that's why there seemed to be a halt in production. Hopefully some better quality ammo will start coming online soon because I do the idea/potential of the round and I already own 2 Bmag's. I had almost a 1,000 rounds of 17WSM ammo, but just sold it off due to the quality issues. One box would shoot around 1 MOA and then another would shoot 2-3 MOA and that's just not going to work for me.

[scope eye]

I am going to keep sorting they ammo and enjoy shooting it, small price to pay for such an awesome round, at least until they sort this whole thing out, now that I know to weigh they ammo hopefully the groupings will shrink.

Dean

[Reeseman]

I went to the trouble of weighing 3 boxes of ammo from the same lot number a month ago and kept it separated when I shot for groups . It made no difference in accuracy . I got the same groupings , fliers and low reporting rounds from all of it . I did get a box of another lot number that had less fliers and held tighter groups .

The ammo is not totally to blame . My gun took a lot of experimenting to get it to shoot . I finally ended up with a pressure pad under the tip of the forearm to get rid of a persistent 3 o clock flier problem the gun had from day 1 . It also tightened up the groups slightly . That's a problem with the gun and not the ammo . The best my heavy barrel shoots is 1.5'' at 100 yards with 20 grain ammo . The 25 grain ammo shoots horrible . Friends of mine can shoot either in their b mags . I consider mine hunting accurate out to 100 yards . Most of my shots are 50 yards or less when coon and fox hunting .

I want to add that my gun prefers 5 to 10 fouling shots to get best accuracy after a cleaning . My accuracy falls off after 40 to 50 shots total . My cleaning has been with Hoppes #9 and a brush followed by a few clean patches pulled thru with a Patch Worm . Bore snakes have not worked because my barrel carbon fouls bad in the lead area and it requires a brush to get it out . I could send it back but I am not waiting 4 or 5 months to get an unproven gun back to me . My hunting starts in September and will go to April . It was a gamble that I took when I purchased it knowing the past performance of other B Mag owners that I know .

Bottom line in my opinion is it a cheaply made gun with low quality ammo that is available . If you choose to buy one it is what it is if you do a little research . I rolled the dice and got about what I expected . I saw it's effectiveness on game last winter and it is impressive . That was my reason for buying one .

[Lonewulf]

I have not weighed any yet but I looked over the last 5 boxes of 25gr and 4 boxes of 20 grain and saw no defects, maybe they are getting the quality under better control

[Lonewulf]

not to change the subject but has anybody else noticed none of the ammo on Cabelas is showing up on Gunbot ?

[rona]

Last I was able to order from Cabelas was 8-18th. 25 grain one box at a time.