Range Report: Wolf 303 British, 174g FMJ

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The following is a repost of something I shared on Calguns.net after I was out shooting this weekend.
A few months ago I ordered about two or three boxes of wolf 303 British to try out of my scoped lee enfield no4mk2. I shot these two or three boxes concurrently with two or three boxes of PPU 174g FMJ; so equal weight bullets out of the same rifle.

Our first session yielded excellent results. The wold 303 kept up with the PPU shooting clay pigeons on a hill at approx 75 yards. This was some slow speed shooting; one shot, wait a few seconds, another shot.

Thinking these results would be consistent, I decided to buy the box of 280 from TSUSA for about $118 or so shipped. Upon arrival, I took the ammo out of the boxes, put it into plastic bags with some desiccant packets and threw it into my ammo can. That was last weekend or so.

This weekend, we drove out to the same spot in the Panoche Hills, setup a large steel plate that we scavenged (it was aprox 2.5'x2.5' and hung from a wood frame) and some clay pigeons on the side of the hill.

I put a few rounds through the steel plate and saw that every couple of rounds, I had a keyhole. This is rather odd since the ammo shot great last time.

I did a little bit of rapid firing at the steel plate, hitting every time with scope and irons, so even with the occasional keyhole, the accuracy was decent enough to have fun.

Attempting to shoot the clay pigeons, setup at about 85 yards this time, I found the ammo disappointing. Granted, this was after some rapid fire and barrel heating, and additionally, I'm still very much a novice to shooting.

I think this ammo would be good for iron/scoped plinking at about 100 yards based off my experience with it this past weekend.

I think the biggest thing to take out of this is to keep the ammo in their boxes, or at least each box "together" instead of seperating it. I may have just gotten a box or two of a bad batch that was keyhole-ing, rather than the whole box being junk.

Didn't help that my scope got knocked off zero, but that part is definitely my own fault.

Overall, would I buy it again if I was plinking at a steel target, or a man sized torso plate at 100-150 yards? Yup! Would I buy it for precise shooting, long range, or low volume shooting? No.

I will be trying to get to a range to get the ammo on paper when I have time to do a formal comparison vs the PPU 303 counterpart.
I figured I would share my experience with other people on here, so they can decide whether the wolf ammo is a waste or decent for their needs.

Re: Range Report: Wolf 303 British, 174g FMJ

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Marlene wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:42 pm I’m not sure you can use the shape of holes in steel plates to meaningfully determine projectile stabilization. It’s not like paper, which exerts nearly no force as the projectile passes through.
I mean, the hole was in the shape of a bullet that passed clean through while moving sideways. I don't know what else to make of it. Wasn't a purpose made steel target, it was actually had some sort of heating pad attached originally.

As a reference, none of the 30-06, 7.62x39, 22lr or .223 we shot at it made any similar pattern holes. The .223 was punching clean through it as well.

Re: Range Report: Wolf 303 British, 174g FMJ

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Something else is possibly at work here. I have heard from a lot of sources that a lot of .303 barrels do no like boat tails on the rear of bullets of the ammo shot in them. Such barrels, if shot with ammo that has boat tails will produce keyholing as you describe.

One of the on-line vendors had a bunch of .303 surplus recently, made in Germany for the Irish Army, using flat based bullets. None of my .303 barrels keyhole with boat tails, but I have not tried any of this German .303:
https://www.sgammo.com/product/303-brit ... s-vintage-

Do an internet search, and you will find such dislike of boat tail bullets attributed to loose manufacturing tolerances, wear (especially from cordite powder) and other sources.

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