Thread: NZFS ammo

Originally Posted by zimmer

No, CAC didnt turn into Belmont but interestingly I think Bruce McMillan may have also run off ammo for the Forest Service when he was operating at Belmont, Lower Hutt. Maybe at the point when CAC had folded.
CAC 308 brass in its time (even once other brands became available in NZ) was acknowledged as quality stuff. Apparently they used brass that was a good as any worldwide to make their cases.
Re Hiretenberger - I used their primers to load my first 308 ammo, and Norma Re brass. That was at the time when the goverment protected CAC and no other commercial 308 ammo was able to be imported. Cannot remember where I sourced the Norma Re from but it was quite rare.
I also managed to buy 60 rounds of Hirtenberger 222Rem from a gun shop in Marton. Never ever saw the brand again.

Hah! I might have got mine (Hirtenberger .222) from Marton too! I was playing footy for Marton Old Boys and was living near Hunterville.

Btw, has the round in the left got a split in the neck? Or is that a trick of the light?

Mega split in the neck

Originally Posted by Tahr

The projectiles were silver (some sort of gliding metal) and they had yellow plastic tips which looked like they may have been actually round with the front half exposed. We thought they were the bee's-knees. Worked ok anyway.

@Tahr I think you are talking about the Norma plastic point projectiles:
Norma Plastic Point - Norma
They were still silver in the early 90's (copper-nickel) but seem to have changed to gilding metal.
We killed lots of things with them out of SLRs and my mates 30-06. They expanded quite fast in comparison with the common lead tip projectiles and tended to rip big holes in goats.
I think I still have a silver one somewhere.

Originally Posted by 7mmsaum

I shot 5 rounds of NZFS ammo over a chrony years ago in a tikka .270

The 130 grainers were doing 2610fps

They turned a .270 into a 7mm08...

A gutless one, most 7mm08 rifles push a 140 grainer at 2880fps

A good friend of mine was a shooter in the Waioeka. He would bugger off the Aussie quite regularly and always left his rifle and ammo with me and at one stage I would have had at least 200 rounds of the NZFS 270 ammo.

Got one left now

I used .303 CAC brass I bought in 1977 and reloaded it a dozen times before the bases separated. Had to get the headspace fixed and a new batch of Norma brass which lasted about 20 years.
I worked briefly for the NZFS at Optoki in 1977 but .303 wasn't a NZFS caliber by then and I was given some in a green box, Speer perhaps, with hollow points. Mostly used my own reload ammo as I wasn't there long (good keen man and all that ...).
There was a silver lead point Norma 180gr .303 bullet but it was hard as - must of been designed for moose or crocodiles. 130 gr were the best on goats but after a few years were not available any more and I had to change to 150gr Norma. I got my last of those from Graham Henry after he wrote an article about the .303 for Rod and Rifle and shortly before he died. In about 2004 I saw a box of 130gr Norma projectile in a gun shop in Copenhagen but they wouldn't sell them to me without a permit.

Max Headroom....here you go,all you ever didnt want to know about the old NZFS ammo.

@Max Headroom

These are the Norma Dual Core plastic tip bullets (180gr) loaded in a 30 06. They were available as a factory load and were very good on game, the recovered projectiles are from deer.
Norma also did a bullet they called the Tri Clad which I used a lot in the early days in my first 270 (130 gr )these to were great on game.
When I was in the NZFS we were issued Sako 50 gr in 222 Rem and a little bit of Hertinburg. The Sako stuff was more reliable than the Hertinburg on deer but worked well on the goats which was our main target.