One of the lads here recently asked to swap some of his CCI subsonic ammo because it was going supersonic in his rifle. I commented that I was having the same problem with CCI ammo I bought from Broncos earlier this year. There’s been a couple of others on this forum commenting about the same thing, and a few similar comments on other forums, in particular in the US.
I mentioned that I had been in touch with CCI and got some additional information, not that it helped me at all.
The combination of CCI Standard Velocity and my 16” CZ455 with Gunworks suppressor has been a very productive one over the last 3 years or so. I bought 2000 rounds of this ammo in early 2019 and ran out in March this year. I then bought 1,000 from Broncos in two 500 boxes, and it has been hopeless. Initially we thought it might be the barrel so I cleaned that (properly), accuracy was perfect afterwards but the flyer issue never went away. Every few shots I would get one with a bang and supersonic crack that sounds just like Mini Mag. I tested the theory on paper & chrono, and the shots that went supersonic were hitting well high on the target at my zero range of 57m. In addition I was getting the occasional very slow round that was striking really low.
Yesterday arvo I was shooting magpies over bait at a range of ~60-85m. The paddock had just been grazed out and was quite muddy which is when the magpies really love it for worms and critters. I’ve been doing very well on the magpies in the last week or so and I thought the problem had gone away. I took two shots. The first one was very loud and struck dead in line but ~2 inches high with a clear splash, range 74m, a clean high miss. The second one 20 minutes later at the same range was dead quiet, slow, splashed well low, a clean miss, and I could clearly hear the delayed sound of the impact. The infuriating thing is that I will go 30 or 40 shots without getting any problems, the ammo shoots accurately and the birds drop. Then suddenly it goes haywire for a few shots… then seems to come right again. For a while it was quite a regular occurrence once every four or five shots but as I’ve moved through the batch the occurrence has varied heaps and now seems to affect six or seven rounds in a row followed by 30 or 40 that are fine.
According to CCI, this batch was tested as an average of 1,077fps in a 24” barrel, with an ES within normal limits. My testing is giving me an average of 1,066fps, incredibly close to what is marked on the box, but I am getting a massive ES with the Chrono showing some shots close to 1,200fps, and one or two around 950fps. I sent the Chrono data over to the techie in America but according to them they didn’t see a problem so nothing they can do.
The interesting thing is that this batch was manufactured in July 2020. So it’s a Covid batch. He wouldn’t tell me what was going on in the plant at the time but I wouldn’t be surprised if stop start manufacturing and poor quality control was a problem for them. The Americans were in the middle of their Covid nightmare in July last year.
I’ve never experienced anything like this unreliability with CCI and I’m really annoyed as I didn’t want to have to start again with a different brand but looks like that’s what I’ll have to do with spring just round the corner.
Anyway after this long waffle, the batch number is G28B107, it is printed on the inside flap of the 50 round boxes. If I were you, before I bought a brick of 500 I would ask to try a 50 box if the batch number is something close to this. Unfortunately I suspect that hand-in-hand with the ammo shortage, we might get a period of poor quality ammo just to really get up our noses.
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