Hi Guys.

Many of us stock and store .22 ammo for survival purposes.  It's always nice to have decent high quality ammo (CCI MiniMags) but we all know that the rimfire market has kinda gone nuts as of the past few years.  We pretty much buy and stock whatever the heck we can find.  Quality varies.  We all have our favorites and likely have our dislikes....

I've often found that I get far more failures to fire with Winchester than any others.  I can remove the duds to find that there was a good solid strike, but no "boom". I've got tons of the much maligned Federal bulk back, as well as Remington Golden Bullet bulk.  I honestly cannot remember when I've had a failure, even if these are not especially accurate and tend to be dirty.  However, the Winchester rim fires give me failures about 10 to 1 over other brands.

i've kept a 500 round carton (Gray bulk pack cardboard cube) of Winchester .22 rimfire "XPERT HIGH VELOCITY" 36 grain HP at the hunt camp.  I don't trust it for hunting or SHTF.  I get failures to fire, and this stuff simply won't cycle a semi auto reliably.  The box says 1280 fps, but I doubt it.  It won't  cycle several .22 handguns (Kimber .22 conversion for 1911 and Ruger Mark II), and won't always cycle two different 10/22's and a Mossberg 702.  It just doesn't push the bolt hard enough to reliably eject and then pick up a round.  Its pretty pathetic when a cartridge cannot fully cycle a straight blow back .22 with a recoil spring that isn't much bigger than the spring in a clicky pen.  We've been using it for plinking.  It'll run about two mags, then you'll get a failure to eject, two more mags, another failure or three, etc....  we have just been blasting with it.

Well, we had a total catastrophic failure recently.  Brother's girlfriend was plinking with it when he heard an off shot,  Sounded weird.  Gun was jammed up.  A case head totally blew off the cartridge, leaving a tube of brass crammed in the chamber.  This was on a mossberg 702 plinkster (cheap POS I bought new for about $59.00 on a Black Friday sale years ago.  We leave it at camp as a camp gun that we won't cry over if its stolen).  I had to totally remove the stock, disassemble the action and then actually remove the barrel from the action to safely remove the brass "tube" from the chamber.  This was so tied up and crammed in that it took quite a while.  And when removed, the damned tube shows evidence of having been driven into the rifling lands by the case head separation.  

All this totally put the gun out of action until I had a bench, punches, hammers, and other assorted tools.  Not a field expedient repair job here.  Had this malfunction happened on something other than this cheap POS moss berg (where I could remove the barrel by drifting a few pins) the gun would still be tied up, likely permanently.

.22 ammo is scarce.  But this shitty Winchester stuff is pure unadulterated garbage.  I won't even keep it for plinking and the remainder of this box is going in the trash.  If I had others, they'd go in the trash too..  There is no point ruining rifles just trying to save a $20 box of ammo.  I'd hate to see someone relying on this stuff, or even just plinking, and having a much-needed firearm end up totally out of service.

Winchester gray box red writing as described above.  Beware.  If this is part of your SHTF supplies, you may want to sample and test (in a junk firearm) before relying on this crap

My entire stash is nothing but CCI. It always goes bang.

I think I've already shot all of mine up that I had like that. It did give me more failures to fire than anything else I've ever used. I'm working my way through some of the 333 Winchester white boxes now, which don't seem to be much better.

I have had poor performance with Winchester as well.

I have an Army footlocker filled with .22 ammo.
Mostly CCI and Federal.

I shoot the oddball stuff first, and save my Minimags for last.

A letter with pics and lot numbers should be sent to Winchester CS.
Tell them you want reimbursement...

Like a case of 5.56

I have found a few things with the Xpert ammo.

The wide flat hollow point makes feeding in many semi autos hit and miss. It seems to do better in the bx-25 mags than the standard 10rd Ruger mags. I have not had a problem with it recoiling the bolt/slide back far enough to strip the next round, only feeding problems.

It is dirty ammo with lots of lead shavings and black residue all over them when brand new in box.

That big, soft lead hollow point comes in handy when hunting, I have not found any .22lr that expands better in small game.

I have not had a huge failure rate with them, but do notice that they have some more duds than other bulk packs. I might get 4rds that dont fire out of a brick. This does not bother me because it was the cheapest out of the bulk packs of .22lr. When Federal and Remington bulk packs were over $17 the Win Xperts were under $15. I have a few guns that shoot it very well but because it is dirty I use it mostly in bolt actions and lever actions.


I have had case head blow outs with Remington and Federal, usually it is in a dirty chamber/boltface when that happens. I have had very good luck with Winchester M-22 and Dyna points. The M-22 seems like it is very comparable to CCI Minimags.

I have a baggie with duds and one with a blown off base from a Winchester Bulk Pack.  It is garbage.

How old was that brick of ammo?

I've got some Winchester 22 from the late 90s and early 2000s.  While dirty and not the best accuracy, I don't recall having a lot of problems with it.  Just wondering what time period it went to hell, of if I've been lucky...

Mine isn't very old.  Only a year or two.

I have a few boxes of Winchester 22lr that won't even chamber (too large) in my rifles or revolvers. Not sure how that even happens. I don't know what to do with them so they just sit on the shelf.

I bought a 5000 round case of Winchester about 8 years ago. I'm down to about 1000 left and it's been rock solid. I don't think I've had more than one or two not fire. Sounds like their quality has gone down hill.  

The grey box xpert is some of the most accurate stuff I've found through my CZ452

 
Winchester XPERT is by far the worst POS .22 LR I've ever tried. I shot it in several rifles and pistols. It gummed up two revolvers: a S&W Model 18 and an old model Ruger Single Six. Absolute garbage.


CCI (of whatever type) is obviously the best but I've had surprisingly good luck with Remington Golden Bullets produced in the past few years. It's dirtier and the brass plating flakes off and gets everywhere, but I'm seeing good accuracy and it functions well in most of my .22 autoloaders.


Federal bulk pack is good as long as it has plated bullets. Automatch is dirty and not as accurate as the plated stuff. My 22/45 Lite has functioning issues with it. Federal Game Shocks are identical to CCI Mini Mags as far as I can tell.

If I remember correctly, Winchester moved ammo production a couple of years ago from a northern state to a southern state. There were issues with quality control around that time. Old employees losing their job were sour and new plant had teething issues. I think rimfire ammo was part of the production move. I think I read something about it here on arfcom. Maybe your ammo was made around that time?

I have one rule in .22 rimfire ammunition.  don't buy bulk packs.  It avoids the floor sweepings and bullets loosened from rough handling.  

Golden bullets in 50 round boxes in bricks has been perfectly reliable for me.  Don't know why they'd be different than milk carton ammo but it seems to be.


ETA- I think you have to watch all the brands these days.  They're flogging their machines trying to keep pace and I think the QC is very suspect.  I know my go to CCI Standard Velocity has been no where as accurate as the stuff I bought 10 years ago.  Might be just a batch thing but I have my suspicions.  Oh and federal makes some CCI ammo as they're both Blount or whatever now.   I saw on rimfire central that you can tell the two apart by the format in their lot numbers.  Also one will have the flat plastic trays and the other will have a tray with legs.

I have a couple sleeves (100 pk) of Super-X HV.  Do you think that stuff will be any better?

 
It has been better than XPERTs in my experience, but not as good as CCI.

that's amazing you swear by the worst know 22lr ammo, yet won't touch bulk packs because of non objective emotional misgivings.

I don't think I've bought .22 in bulk in almost 20 years now. We were shooting a pile of it a few years ago when the boy could only shoot the AK 22 but outside of that, we rarely shoot deuce deuce.

Had problems with Rem. .22 'Golden' a few years ago (continuing to this day as I still use what I punched) - failed to fire (primer issues).  Attempted to contact mgf. but never received a response.  My best guess was a quality issue but WTF - never had a problem years ago ...........

The only .22 I regularly see in the shelves are the Golden Bullet 500rd bulk packs.  I just keep walking, that stuff is garbage.

The indoor range near my office has CCI Stingers for sale if you are shooting there, so I just grab an extra box of those while I'm there.  Neckbeards have ruined .22 shooting.

Winchester 222 packs of HP's are the worst for me.  Only other as bad is Rem bulk pack.

I guess everyone has different experiences..... Over the years I've shot near everything.  You name it.  I've gone thru CIL and Imperial (canadian brands) thru PMC, Aguila, Win, Fed, Rem, Eley, some steel cased Russian stuff, and a fair bit of real obscure odds and ends.  I'd get the occasional misfire.  Some of that CIL stuff would split a case occasionally, but I chalk that up to a good 50 years of storage in indifferent conditions.

You get what you pay for.  CCI Mini Mags and Velocitors are my favorites.  But they aren't cheap.  I do like bulk packs (or did) for plinking and storage.  Federal always worked.  Often the worst accuracy, but it worked.  I;ve hear lots of people complain about Rem golden bullet bulk, but its always worked as well.  Accuracy has been better overall than the Federal.  Aquila, surprisingly enough, shoots very very well in several of my guns, almost on par with CCI minimag.  

However, this Win Expert stuff is pure crap.  And on thinking back, every time I've encountered a rem fire ammo issue beyond the very rare one-in-a thousand dud, its been a damned Winchester that let me down.

My go to brand is CCI.  During the last many many dry years, I've bought whatever major brand I saw on the shelf.  I've had more failures from Rem. than any other brand.

Funny, but I've shot boxes of value packs of Remington GBs and I've never had a misfire in my Ruger Mk II, but that's my only sample size.  I have pre-panic bulk packs of Federal and Winchester, but I don't think that I've ever shot any of them.

I do have CCIs here in the 50/100 sleeve boxes and they've been fine in the Ruger.

This thread shows that there is no one 'common' brand of 'great 22LR' and nobody has a monopoly on turning out 'crappy 22LR ammo.'

Chris

put it up on the EE

I just finished a box of the 555's. All kinds of function issues in a gun that has given me zero previous problems over a couple years of shooting.  I really think most rim fire is hit or miss.

Remington Golden bullets have been the bottom of the pile for me . I shipped 4 packages back to Remington for replacement . They admitted the rounds I sent back had primer issues . CCI and Federal have been the best