I came across a piece of range brass that has had the head deformed to the point that it will not enter a shell holder for depriming, that is how I discovered it. The extractor groove is OK but the center of the case around the primer has been pushed rearward.

I placed a picture of the case next to a normal fired case at :

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7848444/case.jpg

it is a Federal (FC) case.


The odd case is the one at the top. I have never seen anything like this before. There are no signs of over-pressure around the primer pocket.

It almost seems as though  the bolt head itself must have had an issue of some kind. Does anyone have any theories ? Maybe just a factory defect from the ammunition manufacturer.

No it was not fired from my gun, but it was apparently fired from someone's gun.

The extractor groove was cut wrong at the factory, the bevel on the end was caused by the cutter that makes the chamfer on the base.  Your pic doesn't show the whole case but I would guess the AOL and shoulder are in the same location as the "normal" case.  I'm surprised they got the case to extract.
 

That makes sense - I would guess that the round might have failed to extract since the groove would be in the wrong place relative to the base of the cartridge. The TV camera must have missed it in production (I assume Federal uses some type of computer controlled imaging equipment to weed these out)