Earlier this year I happened to be in WalMart and saw they had ample supplies of Federal .22s in the newly designed red box. They were at pre-Obama pricing so I bought a couple.

A few days later it was becoming quite clear that they were about to declare a Pandemic and my thought was "Oh, no, not again". So I went to all 3 Walmarts in the area and bought out the entire supply. I was proud of myself until just recently when I started shooting some of the stuff. In my last 2 outings about 80% went "boom", 10% a mere "pop", and the other 10% made a noise half way in between.

When I open a brick I always transfer the ammo to the gold colored plastic 100 round CCI Minimag boxes that I started collecting back in the 1970's. Thus, I don't have the paper boxes any more and don't know what the lot numbers were.

Needless to say, I am very disappointed in federal. It's not the gun....it happens in several handguns and rifles. When they only pop, its not enough to cycle the slide in a semi.

So much for being prepared!

You are going to get a lot of people purporting they have no issues with bulk ammo by manufacturers. I find the result of most is what you experienced.

For the most consistent ammo, I have found CCI standard and mini mag to be it.


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My exact numbers:

Federal 550-unit boxes, 36/1260
Total shot: 1442
2nd-strike-needed: 8

CCI, all types
Total shot: 1546
2nd-strike-needed: 9

Karma for hording.......lol

I don’t have exact numbers but I coach a SASP team. Every week, we shoot about a couple of thousand rounds. Every time we have a malfunction, we inspect the case after. It’s almost about 8-1 everything else vs CCI. They have issues too. We had a bad batch a year or so ago. But otherwise, that’s about all I buy any more.


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I'm now thoroughly enjoying shooting up the $14.98 cartons of Thunderbolts I bought from WM a year or so ago, that so many on the internet vehemently despised at the time.
Yea, there's a couple "pops" now and again. But who cares? I'm able to plink with my Marlin Model 60 while others are hording their precious stock of CCI's.

I’ve found the Federal “Black Pack” ammo to be less reliable that the Champion stuff.

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Some Might Say.

I just found 2 boxes, One Federal .22 333 box and Winchester 333 box at a Walmart, both for $17.95

I've bought only CCI-SV for a while now; out of several cases, I've had one cartridge that didn't fire the first time. I've tried most of the cheap bulk stuff over the years and I did get an occasional round that didn't fire on the first pull of the trigger with most of that ammo. However, I've never experienced close to the rate of misfires that others have. One exception: a batch of Aguila I bought about fifteen years ago. Perhaps just a sorry lot, but I probably had 10% that didn't fire the first time.

Triggers in my .22 handguns and rifles are as they came out of the box. I don't replace or tamper with them except for the externally adjustable triggers on my Winchester 52 reproductions.

My results are similar to yours. I find the Federal bulk pack .22 is basically junk. I have come to rely on Minimags.

I also prefer MiniMags.
But the last time I saw 22 for sale , this is what it was and I bought some.

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Bulk ammo is, mostly junk and just gets used for blasting tin cans. Not what I call serious, or rainy day ammo.

But, trying to make bulk ammo perform like serious ammo is a fools errand.

Serious ammo IS going to be more expensive, but that doesn't mean you have to shoot it exclusively (unless you can afford to), just have a sufficient quantity for when you need 'The good stuff'.

Just sayin...

Rob

I DO have serious ammo that naturally gets used whenever I shoot a relay. And, the bulk stuff is always reserved for non-serious plinking at camp shooting tin cans and the like. However, I would never have called the bulk Federal "junk" by any means. In fact, my experience has shown that for me it has been consistent enough for the intended purpose.

If I shoot a brick and have a few that require a second strike, I don't consider that to be an insurmountable problem. I can live with that. However, when I shoot a 10 round magazine and have 2 rounds that are so weak that the slide won't go back, THAT's a problem and its not what I have come to expect.

We have a few tubs of it. Surprisingly it ran fine through the 617. Not a FTF so far.

What you say Federal, do you also include Federal American Eagle 22lr as junk, bulk ammo?

Best solution is to spend a little more and get good ammo.

Sometimes easier said than done.

In the 1970's I bought a box of CCI MiniMags every Saturday morning at KMart. Now there are no more KMarts.

I also used to buy them at 1 of 2 local gun shops. They are both closed.

Cabelas and WalMart are what's left. They have no inventory as we speak.

For all the dozens of bricks of bulk .22s I bought over the years, it may not have been "good", but it was good enough.

I guess there is something I don't understand here regarding so called "bulk" 22LR ammo versus "regular" ammo.
What are you all referring to when you call it "bulk" ammo? Is that the boxes of 250, 333, 525 rounds that are just loose packed rounds?
Is a 500 round "brick" with ten 50 round boxes bulk ammo?
I recently purchased some Aguila Super Extra 40gr CPRN from two different online sources, a 500 round "brick of 10 boxes" from one store and 2 250 round loose pack "bulk" boxes from another store. I find it hard to believe there would be a difference in the ammo besides the packaging as it surely must come off the same assembly line.

If CCI, which I agree is a superb ammo, were to package it's ammo in bulk packs would that it make it inferior to the 100 round plastic boxes?

I know if you ask 20 people their opinion on the different brands of 22LR you will get 20 different answers. Up til now my shooting has mostly been with CCI and Blazer but things being the way they are with it being in short supply I buy what I can find at reasonable prices. The Aguila 250 round boxes I bought within the past 3 weeks and paid 8 cents a round. I also got 2 333 round boxes of Winchester 36gr CPHP at the same price. Since then I haven't seen anything less than 15 cents and CCI is at least 25 cents.

Paul Harrell has a LOT of videos on YouTube,, and he shoots in every one of them,,

Watch some, it won't take long, he will be shooting a nice group, then one round is an inch below the rest.

Paul typically says,
Did you notice when I was shooting, the sound of one round was lower than the rest,,?
that is what caused the flyer down low.

He shows that often, and mostly with centerfire ammo.

So, if centerfire ammo is gonna have underpowered rounds occasionally,
SURELY , we gotta expect the lowly 22LR to go poof instead of BANG, on occasion.

Even if all the rounds in a bulk pack of .22 ammo go bang, you'll likely have regular flyers. It has to do with quality control (or lack of it) with the real cheap stuff. You'll have fewer flyers with better ammo. You can quickly find this out on your own; no need for YouTube.

I realize .22 ammo and everything else is hard to find, but the wait might be worth it.

When I was young.........ALL brands of .22 ammo fired 100%. I don't ever recall a dud in the 60's & 70's. Apparently Quality was more important back then.

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S&W Accumulator

If I am just plinking or target shooting for fun and have a few flyers it won't bother me as much paying only 8 cents a round for Aguila or Winchester as it would if I was paying 25 cents for CCI or even more for Eley or RWS target ammo.
Maybe one of these days we will get back to "normal" prices.

The first bulk 22 I recall was the Remington in the Milk Cartons.
A while back I was shooting some in a Ruger Mark II.
It didn’t go well!
I told my Buddy about it.
He asked what ammo?
I told him and he replied Don’t shoot that ****!
Get some decent ammo!

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It might be pointless to post this because of the lot-to-lot variance in cheap bulk ammos, but...

About three years ago, I used two pretty much out-of-the box .22 rifles and fired five, five-shot groups at fifty yards with about twenty-five or so .22 long rifle ammos, standard and high-velocity. No expensive target ammo was used. Instead, I tried the sort of ammunition most of us might buy.

CCI-SV was my standard for judging the other ammunitions' accuracy. Average for both guns (ten groups) was .67". One rifle was a Winchester 52 reproduction with a 6X scope, the other a Ruger 77/22 with a 4X scope.

I had heard others whine about how Federal AutoMatch and Remington Thunderbolt were horrible ammos. The AutoMatch did .68", the Thunderbolt .90". Remington Golden Bullet did 1.12". Winchester Wildcat, the very worst, averaged 1.44". Winchester "235" did 1.06". These are all "bulk" ammos. I'm sure there were flyers in a number of groups. Without them, of course, groups sizes would have been smaller, but I was quite surprised at the accuracy of Federal AutoMatch. Perhaps I got hold of the only good batch of this ammo ever produced.

When the shortages are over and you're looking for the best accuracy from bulk ammo, you have to try many in your gun. If you find one that groups well, see if you can get more of that same lot. Worth a try. Or, buy better ammo.

In these precarious times, I'll take my 6 boxes of Federal Bulk 22 over Zero boxes of Unicorn ammo any day.

I recently had the same problem with the Federal 335 bulk pack - about 2 of every 10 were squibs. Federal quickly replaced them. Said they had a recall for a crimping issue. I haven’t tried the replacements.

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213th FBINA

Pre Obama 22 ammo was $10-$15 per 500, bulk & brick. Very seldom did you have a dud. Some ammo was better than others but if you bought the premium line from American manf. It was quality and uniform stuff. Not match grade but close. Most people don’t have match grade firearms so the manf premium lines were about as good as it gets. Much of the bulk was nothing more than over run. The problem now is that manf have poor quality control. The reason it’s not fixed is they don’t want to shut down a line long enough to make adjustments. The buying public can stop this by refusing to buy this stuff. Also keep duds and complain to dealer and manf Insist on rebate or replacement. It’s the principle of the thing and enough people complain they might fix the problems.

I was waiting for mention to come up of Federal’s Auto Match. Approximately 15-20 years ago I was introduced to this ammo (1 or 2 box changes ago) and found it to be consistent and acceptably accurate. I tried to keep it “in stock” and buy more as I found it through the Obama Ammo Drought, but I seem to notice that now I’m getting misfires where I never experienced them before. It works OK for plinking but I fear I’ll have to pay more for serious shooting.

The good news is that I built up a nice backlog of about 7-8000 rounds of the stuff so I can plink and practice a lot!

Froggie

I just looked and I have been shooting Federal 1100 Black Pack 38gr. HP, and have not had a failure to fire in about a fourth of the bulk pack. Just shot a grey digger (Ca. ground squirrel) about an hour ago and it worked fine. I have quite a bit of .22 ammo, bought thru the years, and seldom have a misfire. Now, I did find a ziploc bag of about thirty rounds of the same looking Federal ammo, but very corroded and dirty, and had about thirty % misfires, but very old and not taken care of ammo.

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Kevin in Oregon

Over the past twelve months my wife and I have probably shot two dozen bulk packs (550) of red box Federal we bought at Walmart. We’ve also shot a good amount of various other brands. We have probably More than a dozen rifles ranging from new Henry carbines to Winchester 62A’s and Ruger 10/22’s and some old Remingtons. We also shoot out a variety of S&W, Ruger & Browning auto pistols and Ruger and Smith revolvers. We’re just plungers basically shooting steel and some paper. Just guessing we might have had a half dozen failures with the Federal. Pretty much all others have been equally reliable. The only obviously low power round was a single round of Federal my wife fired a week ago.

Accuracy seems, at least for us, to be more a function of the gun/barrel we’re shooting out of. Just like other guns some ammo groups better out of one one and not out of another. Each of our guns seem to have favorite ammo that performs the best. Some guns it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference as far as accuracy and others are really finicky.

Just recently I’ve gotten into shooting a Ruger precision 22wmr. I tested about 10 different brands and loads and I was stunned at how much difference accuracy carried. At 100yds Hornady v-max 30gr shot a sub 1/2moa and Federal patterned like a shotgun giving about a 4” group of 5 shots. CCI v-max was close to the Hornady and Winchester a close 3rd but had poor QC issues.

I was in wally world last week. No 22rf, very little of any centerfire rifle ammo and even the value packs were looking pretty bad. Bought 4 boxes Federal game loads and some dummy stole two rounds out of the box. So instead of 100 rounds now down to 98. Those were the last 4 boxes #4 shot. Even the dvd and games section looked cleaned out. There was a rumor that our store was going to be closed and another one opened near a major highway. They actually had to put steel one way gates up as people were walking outwith shopping carts full of food and not paying. Was a nice store when they first opened, now looks like a dump. Real shame. Frank

I've also had good results with Automatch. Stocked up a few years ago, so can't comment on recent batches, but it's worked well in all my 22s.

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With S&W, you're holding history in your hand

Ever since I was a kid I always bought Remington Golden .22s or CCI Mini-Mags. We shot a lot of Olin .22s on the rifle team.

I've always liked Federal's centerfire ammo but never really liked any of their rimfire rounds, AutoMatch included. I dumped all of my random boxes and bulk packs of .22 ammo at a dime a piece and bought a case of CCI SV at a dime a piece--worked out to be a near-dead even swap and I've got a good supply of ammo that I like. I'll take that deal anytime!

Worst sound ever heard when its life or death....CLICK.

“What are you all referring to when you call it "bulk" ammo? Is that the boxes of 250, 333, 525 rounds that are just loose packed rounds?”

Yes.

I think I discovered your problem.

I have had good luck with the Federal bulk packs. I will admit the ones I am using were purchased 20 or so years ago.

Just the other day I bought some 300 rounds 38 Special PMC Battle packs.
Apparently meant for us guys who plan to go into battle with our 38s!
That’s 6 boxes in a sealed plastic pouch.

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I have two Victory 22’s. I use one with a red dot and one with open sights. Started out using Federal Auto Match ammo. Both pistols ran great thru several boxes. All at once both pistols started having the same problem. Just would not cycle properly. I had two boxes with the same lot numbers giving me the same problem. I switched to CCI MM and again they both ran fine. My last outing I tried some Remingtons and they ran fine with no problems. Was saving my CCI. I think we get some bad rounds in most brands. I usually save the Remingtons for my 617’s.

This has been my experience also, except mine were all bought in the last 12 years or so, if my memory serves me reasonably well. I'm sorry to hear that they haven't been as reliable lately.

Regards,
Andy

I haven't shot much .22 in a few years, but I used to go through a ton of the Federal Champion in the blue bulk boxes (I think 525rd) and never had a problem, it actually used to surprise me that it was so reliable out of my M18. Now I don't know if it is true, but someone years ago cautioned me "go easy on the .22s, if you beat them around we won't have nothing duds." and I have always handled my .22 ammo gently..

Exactly what he said. Well done.

Since 95% of all .22 lr I shoot is either 550 "Wallybox" or regular 525 Federal coated bulk packs this is my experience. The priming is not 100% around the rim in maybe 1% of rounds. Sometimes all go boom sometimes 1-10 out of a box don't. Maybe a "Monday/ Friday workday" thing. Powder loads are inconsistent in 1% of rounds. Last outing neither my MKII or 10-22 was functioning well. Specifically empties left in the chamber/not ejected. I had a mini bottle of RemOil in my range bag and slicked up (overly wet) both insides, no further troubles. With light loads the bolt needs to have no resistance to cycle. The powder is coarse, large grains too, must be hard to meter precisely on ten million rounds a day. $.02 Joe

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Wisdom chases me; I'm faster

Of all the cheap ammos, CCI SV and Blazer are reasonably accurate and have the lowest rate of misfires. I don't recall a misfire ever with Blazer and only one after thousands of rounds of CCI SV. I do shoot a lot more SVs than Blazers, however. These two are fairly accurate with SV doing better than Blazer and they'll both function in about everything. I use about a dozen or more handguns and six or seven rifles. Spend a little more on ammo; it's worth it and you won't be the ones bellyaching about misfires and ammo that won't reliably work the actions in semi-autos.

Leave all the junk ammo to those that think they're getting a good buy.

Same here. I still have a stack of them. I bought them when they were $7.97-$12.97 per box. I ran out of room for any more, so I stopped buying them.

I just took a look in my 22 Range Bag.
I had shot these in several 22s, including a 10-22, couple of revolvers, Several autos.
Don’t recall any Failures to Fire.
And those are Mini Mags in the no top box.

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OK, I'm more than anxious to hear your assessment.

OK, I confess to taking away ammo from the millions that never owned a gun and now NEED one, but that doesn't excuse Federal's inability to produce a quality (i.e. usable) product.

Avoid WalMart.


You're welcome.

I've had good reliability with recent production Federal Automatch, Field and Range, and Armscor. That's shooting a Glock 44 and anything weak will cause a FTE.

Walmart has experts who figure out what it costs to make something, and they order ammo by the millions of rounds, so they can be ruthless when it comes to squeezing their price to the minimum. Want quality? You have to pay for that. Much of the customer base doesn't want to. A couple of duds per box is fine for them.