I went  shooting on my friends property upstate this weekend , and while we wre shooting his neighbor decides to join us. There  were 5 of us there already ,wtf the more the merrier . so this guy breaks out his gear  and starts to set up  and he pulls out a ice chest. I told him that  my friend doesn't allow alcohol  when we are shooting, and this guy says, this ain't  booze ,its my ammo! this guy had 80-100 rounds vacuum packed with one of those food saver machines ,ON FUCKIN' ICE! Itold him ihave never in my life heard of such a thing, he says a lot of people are doing it and his rifle(rem. 700 pss) shoots better this way. I immediately raised the bullshit flag,verbally. am i missing some thing here? has any body else heard of such a thing? was i premature in raising the b.s. flag? i would think that any moisture inside the cartridge would condense and ruin the powder when he opened the bag. i just dont think that helps in any way, maybe im wrong. i dont know. SEMPER FI

I don't see it ruining his ammo. Have you ever heard of a NY cops ammo going bad because he went from below freezeing temps outside to nice warm temps in a donut shop? As for the shooting better it might or might shoot worse, colder ammo and gun equals less pressure, hotter temps equals hotter loads, that might be the difference, reloading manuals warn that max loads developed in cold temps might be over pressure if fired in hot weather. Of course if (big if) that is what makes his gun shoot better he would be better off just developing a good room temp handload.

Good point on the donut shop theory, but going from one extreme to the other  has to play hell with accuracy.

Back when I used to shoot IPSC and the power factor was higher I  remember guys saying something about not leaving ammo in a hot car as it would crono too low if it was close to the line.Some would carry ammo in ice chests with or without ice.I seem to remember some of the rifle paper target guys talking about some powders being more stable as regards to tempeture change.This ran along the line of not developing a handload in cold weather and then counting on it shooting well in the summer.Of course these guys really work all the fine details and the difference might not be noticeable to us mere motals (regular shooters and hunters)

That tops it for Me !  Need to help that dude find a rifle that shoots good warm . That's the reason why Alaskans shoot so good !..................scientific breakthrough !!

Wait a minute, in High Power we know not to work up a load in Feb. and expect to use it all summer
because there's a damn good chance it would be over presure by July. As for ice cold ammo that
would seem to have the possibility of erratic ignition and a higher spread in velocities, no?
Although I have seen guys who keep their long range ammo in their lunch cooler to keep the temp.
lower than ambient until the end of the day when they get to the 600 yd. line.
[okay I'm repeating some of what the other guy said]

The only thing I can possibly come up with is that it might be a more consistent temperature. If you just carry your ammo in a normal container, it's temperature would vary wildly depending on the weather of the day or where it was stored. A hot day in the car might put it around 110 and a cooler day with it in the back of your truck might see it around 50. A pretty big swing, factor in some winter shooting and it would vary even more.

In a cooler with ice. Your going to get a fairly consistent temperature, maybe 40 degrees or so, regardless of conditions. So you can work up your load and setup your rifle to perform with that in mind and probably get more stable performance.

That's the only reasoning I could come up with, but I would never bother, I'm too lazy for all that worry.

Mike

Well that settles it.... I'm going to invent a magazine that you store in your freezer like those blue ice packs for collers.