I have been noticing that their are numerous ammunition sellers who are stocked up on foreign brands of ammunition. I generally avoid that stuff. Looking for comments on the foreign ammunition currently available.

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Come and take it!!

I have found that it shoots ok, biggest problem is some firearms won't chamber it. I have found at least 3 DPMS ARS in 223 that won't chamber steel cased ammo. I have several friends that say their 1911s have a lot of failure to feed and chamber steel .45 acp. Rumor has it that steel cased ammo is hard on extractors.
SWCA 892

Ordered some Norma .38 special target / training that was in stock at Norma Shooting. (A forum member had given a heads up in a post.) A flash sale a couple of weekends ago with free shipping over $50. 158 gr. FMJ at $26 a box. Since I can't find any locally I bought some.

Good looking ammunition. Made in Hungary. Believe Norma is a Sweedish Company that has been making ammunition for many years.

The Aguila .22LR that i have purchased lately has been top quality.

I have shot Aguila 22lr, 38 Super and 45 ACP and have had no problems whatsoever. I purposely buy their 22lr when I see it. I prefer their 45 ACP over Winchester white box or Remington range.

Norma, I like very much it is consistent, chrono is as advertised.

Aguila .22s are better than most domestic ammo. I really like their .22 Shorts. Their quality control seems better because when chronographing Aguila .22s the extreme spreads are less than with domestic .22s.

Aquila 22 ammo has been my go to company for decades.
Way better that most of our ammo made in the USA except CCI. Some lots are super accurate in my guns of the standard velocity and the new target stuff is fantastic if you can find it.

Aguila (Mexico) is terrific. Tula (Russia) is better than nothing. MagTech (Brazil) is good. IMI (Israel) is very nice ammo. PPU (Serbia) is good. PMC (Korea) is good. Sellier & Bellot (Czech Republic) is good. Armscor (some Phillipines, some USA) is good. Wolf (various countries) is decent to good. Fiocchi (some Italy, some USA) is good.

I think those are all the foreign brands I've used.

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Or something like that . . .

I like their 22 line up, lots of imagination and options.
SSS (Super Sniper Subsonic) is a cool round, still trying to find a bolt gun that offers a twist rate to stabilize that 60 grain bullet (have a Mossberg 22 that does a fairly decent job, but not so with others i.e., Ruger 10/22, etc.)
The Calibri and Super Calibri are great campfire guns, plinking aluminum cans with revolvers and near in distances.... low noise, and funky ballistics from the 20 grain bullets make for some good fun.
They make several other loadings, cannot find anything wrong with any.....

Good stuff.

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.............SmithNut

I don't know of any foreign-made ammo sold on the USA market which could be considered "Bad." Aguila (back then called CDM) was started as a joint venture with Remington. S&B, in the Czech Republic, is quite possibly one of the earliest ammunition manufacturers on the planet still in operation.

I am all out of Tula 9mm with brass cases.............

but the Aquila 9mm has worked well in my pistols, wothout any problems.

The stuff from Brazil has also worked for me, if "Jerry" does not hog it.

Another fan of Aguila. Had a bad experience with Armscor .22s during the 2008 drouth with excessive pressure/burst cases, but they took it back & refunded my $. Three dud primers out of my first box of S&B .38 Spls ended that experiment. Prvi has never disappointed. Norma is outstanding. Fiocchi .22 WRM is the most accurate of that caliber I've tried, and I've been trying since the Nixon administration.

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I need ammo, not a ride.

With steel cased ammo, it’s all about what the case coating is.
Varnished cases, bad to OK
Polymer coated cases, good.

Aquilla ammo is at best mediocre. I have a few bricks of 22 LR but it won't run in my MKII. I shoot it in my bolt rifle.

Steel cased ammo? Only a few companies in the eastern block build firearms for steel case ammo. I won't miss it when it's gone.

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That's just somebody talkin.

When I bought my Sport 2 last year the only ammo i could get was Tula steel case so had grabbed some boxes. It worked well enough for me to get used to the AR platform (this was my first) and get some trigger time in as I enjoy shooting it.
I did notice the occasional round would sound slightly different, and would be out of the grouping on the target. But it all fired and I guess for my needs did the job.
Now that I have been able to get some brass cased ammo I wont bother looking for the steel stuff anymore. But in the end if i needed something and that was it i would use again.

I've had very good results with Aguila .22LR



Sellier & Bellot .22LR
print screen windows xp


PPU .38SW



MagTech .38SW



and MagTech .45ACP

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Mike
S&WCA #3065

also PPU .357





and Aguila .357

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Mike
S&WCA #3065

It’s pretty hard to avoid ‘it.’
In most cases, I’m out sure I can actually tell the difference!
And results vary.
The last two Failures to Fire I’ve had were CCI 22s.
In a Ruger LCP.
Gun or Ammo?

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

I've shot many cases of Aguila match and standard velocity .22 ammo in mostly semi-auto pistols and find it accurate and reliable . When Eley went to digital for .22 production, they sold their analog equipment to Aguila and went to Mexico and helped them set it up. Aguila centerfire ammo is fine. Magtech is good stuff. The only Wolf ammo I've shot is their .22 and it is made by Lapua. It's good too! I have used Wolf primers and they are good, but somewhat tight to seat in the primer pocket. I'm not a fan of steel cased ammo and the indoor range, where I'm a member, doesn't allow its use anyway.

The 'coated' cases would gum up my chambers and needed to be scraped off after shooting. I won't use them anymore.

Norma is very good and reliable... and at a better than price than most of the others out there. I believe Academy Sports carries Norma @ ~ $19.00/50 rounds.

I avoid steel case on general principles, but other than that, I find the foreign stuff I've bought to be satisfactory. I especially miss the old Red Chinese stuff. It was cheap and worked well, especially the 9mm that I got when it was available. My 639 loved it.

The old RWS Target (22 LR) was pretty great stuff when I was shooting it in my High Standard Bullseye guns.

Froggie

Aguila 22 work fine in my semi-autos. Very hard to extract from cylinder in revolvers.

IMG_20150830_170527578.jpgWe handload for everything in the inventory - but - I used to scour the local big-boxes for case lots of cheap 9mm for a very specific purpose. My son has a Hi-Point 9mm semi-auto carbine and likes to "walk around" the ranch with it. I really don't want to pick up brass all over the place and my son did not seem to want to do so with any appreciable diligence.

I handed him boxes of, usually, TulAmmo, steel-cased Russian 115 grain stuff, and didn't care where the empties went. They, eventually, all rust away. Getting pretty hard to find with the recent ban and TulAmmo hasn't been "cheap" for a while now. Luckily the lad is getting to be more responsible and hunts his empties with a bit more fervor these days. The TulAmmo has served us well in this capacity as that Hi-Point is no picky eater. I've never been tempted to use it in our 9mm handguns.

And BTW; please don't poo-poo the Hi-Point carbine. If you haven't played with one my advice is don't; unless you've room in a safe for one. Fun with a capital "F" and with the red-dot my boy is pretty deadly with it.

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Ordnung muss sein
SWHF #789

It just gets stranger.
I just bought a 400 Round Plastic Bottle of coated lead Bullet CCI 22 Ammo.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

Regarding Aguila, at one time, and maybe still, they were using the Eleyprime mixture under license from Eley for their primers and also in RF ammunition. Eleyprime supposedly is safer and simpler to handle than the normal Lead Styphnate priming mixture. I don't know what Eleyprime consists of. Does anyone here know what is used to make it?

Just a shout out for PPU and S&B. PPU 7.62x51 is the most consistent NATO spec ammo in my battle rifles. S&B 140 grain 6.5 Creedmoor is the most accurate factory ammo in my LR rifle, with SIG 140 a close second at about twice the price.

Larry

Regarding a couple of ammos mentioned here, based on my own experience, and I shoot .22s a lot...

I've used Aguila off and on, mostly off, for about fifteen years. It's primarily been standard velocity; I've had good results accuracy-wise and some not so good. At least ten years ago, I bought a quantity (may have been a case) and had more misfires with it than any .22 ammo I've ever used. Perhaps just a bad lot. I mentioned this to an Aguila rep at a SHOT Show and he offered no explanation that I can recall. The last batch of Aguila SV that I bought a few years ago shot well, but it was noticeably behind CCI SV and a number of other .22 ammos in accuracy. Lot-to-lot uniformity may not be Aguila's strongpoint, but for cheap ammo, it's better than some others.

CCI SV - I've been buying this stuff by the case for a long time. Not the most accurate in every gun, but generally pretty accurate in most rifles and handguns, enough so that I can simplify things by buying one ammo. It functions well in semi-auto handguns where many other ammos won't do this reliably. Accuracy is fairly consistent from batch-to-batch. I've had two misfires with CCI SV over the past twenty years and both of those were within the last couple of years, maybe from a case I purchased six or eight years ago.

Some claim recently manufactured CCI SV doesn't shoot as accurately as older stuff and some misfires have been reported. Those claims may be true, but I can't comment as I haven't fired any of the more recent stuff that I bought in the last three or so years when this ammo was between $200 and $250 per case of 5,000. It's been the best .22 ammo available for my purposes for a long time. I hope it has not become on of the lesser ammunitions.

I don’t know the composition of the Eley rimfire priming compound, but over the years several companies (including Remington and Aguilla) have experimented with using it. You know when you shoot Eley primed ammo by the distinctive but hard to describe (sweetish?) smell. Once you experience it, you will remember it.

Froggie

as far as .22, I use Eley club to hunt with, and shoot a lot of Aguila std.vel.in my Colt woodsman or old revolvers...can only remember a couple duds in last several years....love it

I don't know the chemical difference, but on the firing line, I can tell if someone is shooting Eley-primed rimfire. It smells "sharp"

I still have 7 cases of Federal Gold Medal Match 22lr (the stuff with the dimple in the head). I haven't bought 22lr in years. I have used about 2000 rounds of Aguila 30 carbine and have been very pleased with it. It's brass cased that I bought at the CMP store south about 10 years ago.

I've used Aguila .22 SV in my Walther GSP in Bullseye competition for several years, since back when CMP was selling it (delivered to my door!) for something like $170 per case of 5K. No complaints whatsoever, either in accuracy or dependability. Several other members of my team have had the same experience.

I, too, have had good experiences with the Aguila Super Extra HV in many different 22lr applications: truly a quality product IMHO.

Cheers!

P.S. I bought my case quite a while ago and at about $0.046 per round (delivered!) seemed like a very good idea at the time... Now it seems BRILLIANT!