Around SHOT Show, I saw an AR15.com video with Top Shot Kelly Bachand talking about
Eagle Eye Ammo and was pretty interested. Over the past 5-6 months or so I have to see one glowing review after another about Eagle Eye. I have been intrigued by the reported consistency of Eagle Eye cases and that they test every lot to ½ moa or better. In the past, my experience with factory ammo has been that every lot is different and occasionally you get a great lot and occasionally you get one that’s not so great. I usually am able to find some product info on here to read before making a purchase but I wasn’t able to find anything about Eagle Eye.
A few weeks ago I noticed Brownell’s has started carrying Eagle Eye and I figured if
Brownell'shas it there must be something to this stuff. So, with some tight work deadlines coming up, family time (ie. ‘honey do’) kids on summer vacation cutting into time for cranking out hand loads I thought for a change I’d take the plunge to try Eagle Eye.
To make a long story short I am very impressed and can confidently say that Eagle Eye is the new benchmark in match ammunition. The first two boxes were so good I bought a whole case! The Eagle Eye ammo will easily shoots sub-half moa groups all day long. There was an
Accurate Shooter Daily Bulletin a few months ago showing a sub-quarter moa group at 200 yards. After actually shooting some Eagle Eye myself, I agree with the conclusions Accurate Shooter, Sin City Gun Club and The Truth About Guns came to: with a good shooter and a good rifle Eagle Eye ammo is probably capable of 1/4 moa groups or better consistently right from the factory with no weight sorting needed.
Eagle Eye 223 rem 69gr 100 yards full target pic (see close ups below) - Rock River 20" Varmint Rifle
Eagle Eye 223 rem 100 yards – 5 shot group (center), 3 shot groups left and right
Eagle Eye 223 100 yards – 3 shot group (yes blew my mind too - Upper right of full target pic)
Eagle Eye 223 rem -3 shot group (upper left of full target pic)
Eagle Eye 223 rem – 3 shot group (bottom left of full target pic)
Eagle Eye 223 rem 100 yards – 3 shot group (bottom right full target pic)
I also did some shooting tests with a Savage 10FCP-K:
Eagle Eye 223 rem 100 yards Savage 10 FCP-K full target – 5 shot group left and 10 shot group right
Eagle Eye 223 rem 100 yards – 5 shot group
Eagle Eye 223 rem 100 yards – 10 shot group
Center to center that 10 shot group is just over .5 inches, a result I am exceedingly happy with. I think a better shooter could have tacked those up a little tighter.
In both rifles, I found the EE to be a bit better than what I typically get out of a handload. I think the reason for the accuracy is the consistency of the ammunition. I did not pull any of the cartridges to measure powder dump etc but I did weigh two boxes (40 rounds) and found an extreme spread in fully loaded case weight of just 1.1 grains! While the spread may seem exceedingly low, my measurements were almost identical with those published on the Sin City Precision blog and consistent with the AR15.com video where Kelly Bachand was discussing a 1gr in 308 extreme spread in case weight.
On a related note, while the groups I shot were about as good as I can do, there are multiple accounts of people doing considerably better than me. Using Eagle Eye 223 Sin City Precision Gun Club shot a .187 moa 5-shot group and the Truth About Guns pulled off a .21 moa 5-shot group with an Armalite!
Sin City Precision Tests
The Sin City chrono test was for 308. I imagine the 223 would be every bit as good.
The Truth About Guns Armalite M-15 using Eagle Eye Ammo
I was also fortunate enough to get ammunition which appears to be from two different lots.
Boxes and lot numbers of my Eagle Eye 223 rem. The diamond target was shot with lot 31101416/1 and the small bore target was shot with lot 10101422/0.
The Truth About Guns and
The Firearm Blog talked about randomly selecting rounds from three different lots and shooting one round from each lot while still getting 1/3 moa groups with the 308. I didn’t personally mix and match from the different lots. However, the ammo maintained zero between lots; something that rarely if ever happen with factory ammo. When I look at mean point of impact (some finicking with zero on the diamond target aside) and dispersion of groups, I would imagine that the target pictures would have looked awful similar if I had tossed the rounds into a hat.
The consistency is what impresses me the most. These two targets (32 rounds) and 15-20 rounds on steel represent a whole range session. It wasn’t that I shot one amazingly tight group, its that the groups were consistently very tight across the whole day and two lots.
One of the reasons I stopped buying factory ammo years ago was because different lots of GMM, Black Hills, Lapua etc sometimes mean wildly different performance and having to completely redo DOPE tables. When I hand load I know it’s the same components and same performance every time. Eagle Eye is the first factory load that I would have as much confidence in as one of my hand loads.
The companies slogan “Consistency is Accuracy” which you can see on their boxes below the name is probably one of the truest statements in shooting. Everything we do in hand loading is about improving consistency and thus improving accuracy. Eagle Eye has finally managed to do the same thing on an industrial scale; if not maybe even a little bit better.
My conclusion: if you want the absolute best, don’t want to worry about your ammo performing, are sick of hand loading or just looking for some good factory chow Eagle Eye is well worth a shot ;)
Below are some pictures of the ammo and spent cases. I also have some Eagle Eye 308 175 ammo I will be shooting over the weekend and will post those results too.