Ammunition Consistency Testing: Wilson Combat, PMC, and Remington

With the 1,000 yard rifle for $500 project well underway, it makes sense that a nice and consistent ammunition should be chosen to provide the best results. While a single box of anything I tested this time around would put me over budget in a heartbeat it’s still important to figure out which brand out there is the best in the .308 Winchester / 7.62x51mm NATO variety. For, you know, science and stuff.

Our first brand to test today is the reigning champion of the .223 Remington trials, and has failed to be unseated by even the best Hornaday can throw at them. So far, that is.

Wilson Combat hand loads every single round of ammunition they produce, lovingly crafting each round to ensure top notch consistency. They have been good friends to TTAG, putting up ammunition for me to use in my rifle matches and even being an advertiser on the site. Don’t think for a second, however, that we’ve fudged the numbers for them in the consistency testing. They’ve earned their place at the top so far, but can they do it again for .308?

PMC Ammunition is one of the cheaper brands. It’s usually considered well above “military surplus” grade, but also well below “match” grade. It fills that spot in the middle of the spectrum for when you want to shoot for cheap, but still want to be near the X ring. But how does it compare to the other brands?

The guys at the gun shop talked me into buying a box of this last one for one very good reason. According to the sales guys, they can’t keep this stuff in stock during deer season. The second it hits the shelf they’re sold out again. The ammo in question is Remington’s “Managed Recoil” .308 hunting round. It uses a 125 grain bullet and a significantly smaller powder load so that hunters don’t hurt their shoulder when firing, but still provides enough power to put down a deer.

The biggest claim these guys make: the zero is the same at 100 and 200 yards. That’s another story for another day. All we’re concerned about with right now is consistency.

With special thanks to the Clark Brothers in Warrenton, V.A. for providing a range while our usual test facility is under repair, I was able to get some good chronograph readings on everything here. The procedure was set out the first time we did this, and the test rifle remains the Mossberg 100 ATR which we are using for the 1,000 yard rifle project.

As usual, we are including the current “superior” ammunition in these boxplots to give an idea of what the team to beat looks like. While PMC and Remington both are decidedly out of the running for the top slot, Wilson Combat appears to be closing in. While they may not be drastically more consistent, at least their velocities are more normally distributed than the “leader.” Let’s normalize this and take another look.

It’s still way too close to call, at least for the interquartile range. Including the whiskers Wilson Combat appears to be in the lead, but we’ll have to consult the bar graph to see which one really is the best.

After calculating the IQR for all of the ammunition brands tested, Hornaday still seems to hold its lead. Barely. A difference in IQR of just about 2 could possibly be a sampling error, so further testing will need to be done to determine the “true” winner. Until then we’ll just have to keep on testing more and more brands.

The truth is out there.

While we’re talking about consistency testing, may as well drop in the latest .223 results as well.