I just received 1,000 rounds of the Southern Ammo .308 today. The order was placed about 3 weeks ago. Their webpage is currently not accepting backorders.

I have gone through the first box of 500, and did a count and visual inspection. The ammo is nicer cosmetically than the M193 I received from them a few weeks ago. Search for that post and check out the pic that I posted. There are fewer tarnished rounds in this batch, and only a couple of them have some dings in the brass. 99% of the ammo is bright and shiny.  There were two rounds which were problematic. One was a WCC headstamped rond that had a loose bullet. It appears that the factory crimp was bad on that round. One other round had the bullet not seated concentrically.

To do the visual inspection, I dump the ammo out on my pool table, grab about 10 rounds, and roll them sideways while looking for cosmetic & bullet seating problems. This works pretty well.

All in all, I'm very pleased with this purchase. I'll post pics of some samples tomorrow.

I'm not gonna post pics - look at my previous post in the .223 thread. Same kind of stuff.

I did find a total of 5 bullets with runout. There's the one that was fairly loose, and the others were fairly minor. It's pretty amazing how accurate a visual check is just rolling the bullets sideways. I would have never noticed otherwise. Makes me wonder how many rounds in factory ammo might have the same problem. Now in all fairness: none of the loose rounds experienced dangerous setback; I push each one down tip-first hard, and none of them went past the cannelure. That makes me feel a lot better - they might have simply not shot as accurate but wouldn't have been dangerous.

They tumble the loaded rounds.  Anyone know for how long?  That isn't good for the powder, is it?  My understanding is that it can break down the powder into finer grains, which could result in higher pressures.  Thoughts?

Cool, thanks much for the info.  I bought a couple thousand rounds from them and so far, so good.  I was just wondering if I should be concerned with the tumbling issue when deciding whether to buy more.

I have gone through a visual inspection of about 1200 of the rounds while linking them to run in a 1919.  I didn't roll the rounds on a table though, that is a great idea!  Of the rounds I've gone through I've found none that gave me concern.

I have ordered somewhere around 15K of their 308.  The last batch of 5K had about a 2% crap rate - ie corroded and nasty.  THe good news was that 50% of it was late 80'S winchester ball so the brass should be decent for reloading.  This was by far the most/worst batch Ive gotten from them.  THen again it had the least FN (berdan primed) and the most WIN.  In general its Izzy, TZ, LC, Win, and a small proportion of FN.

With shipping it works out to $133/case to my door.  Pretty hard to beat it.  Most of it is boxer primed so you budget reloaders (I reload lots of 308 tracer) will have a good source of brass.

My shooting buddy runs it thru his FAL and likes it.  I run mine thru an mg42 and 2 1919's and Ive been very pleased.  Other than this last batch I have had better quality than Z reports.  Then again, Im only looking for rounds that appear corroded 'cause I dont want to blow up my guns.  I have only tested it once for accuracy (out of 1919) and I was getting 2" wide X 3" high at 100yards off a tripod.  Good enough for a beltfed IMO.