There are a lot of ammunition manufacturers out there that make some rather impressive claims about accuracy, but so far very few have been able to back those claims up with solid performance. We have been testing the big names in the ammunition world, and so far those tests seem to put Winchester on the top of the pack. Even then, they don’t make any claims about the accuracy of their ammo. Eagle Eye is a new ammunition manufacturer that not only claims to be the best on the market, but backs it up with a guarantee — 1/2 MoA accuracy from every box, every time. But it gets better . . .
Even if you find a box of ammo that works with your gun, that doesn’t mean that it will always work. Pro shooters, especially those in the precision shooting world, do something called “lot testing.” There can be massive variation in everything from case thickness and composition to powder charge between different lots of the same SKU of ammunition, and that can mean the difference between a one hole group and not even hitting the target. I have not so fond memories of doing lot testing of Eley ammunition back in college to try and find a lot that worked in my Anschutz .22lr rifle, and despairing at the idea of doing it all again when that lot eventually ran out. Eagle Eye wants to end that process by guaranteeing that every lot will be identical, every single time.
I first heard about Eagle Eye when I was contacted by Holger Kamin, a charismatic German who is currently in charge of their media relations. Holger isn’t just some PR guy — he has a pedigree in this industry. He’s been off running his own deep sea lure manufacturing business lately, but at one time he was the head of sales and marketing for Lapua. He made the above claims to me, and I was very interested in seeing if they could pull it off.
The secret to their success: a massive nerd.
The man behind the company is Justin Brown (Ph.D.), and he comes from the medical world instead of the firearms world. His idea of precision and consistency is much, much higher than anything the ammunition companies currently cranking out rounds uses. If you have any doubts about his statistical background, simply mention the mean radius shot group measurement standard and sit back as he unleashes a full hour long dissertation on exactly how dumb that idea is. He brought that love of statistics to the ammunition manufacturing process, and the results are something that a number of notable people are standing behind.
I spent a few days this week hanging out with the Eagle Eye guys and their sponsored shooters, including Kelly Bachand (of Top Shot fame) and Glenn Dubis (who has a rather impressive number of world records in shooting). They wanted to show off what the ammunition can do, and they made a very compelling argument. They started by showing off some chronograph results that showed their ammunition’s standard deviation being smaller than the IQR of the best ammo we have tested yet (FYI, StDev is a bigger range than IQR, hence the impressiveness), but it didn’t end there. They shot a bunch of 3-round groups to prove that the ammunition is indeed performing to the spec, but then they changed it up.
They had three different lots of ammunition on the table. For these three groups above, they fired one round from each lot into the group. The results of any other ammunition brand would normally be much bigger groups than when grabbing from the same lot, but in this case the groups were still just as impressive. These groups were fired from 100 yards with a custom bolt action rifle from Desert Arms called the X24, but even with factory guns the groups were remarkably small.
There’s some real potential here. No need to re-zero for every new lot, no wondering if the ammo you’re using is going to suddenly start shooting remarkably different from one box to the next, and a much tighter group than with any other brand on the market. We’ve got some of their ammo on hand for further testing and a full review, but from what I’ve seen I am very damn impressed.