A view from over the pond
In the UK we have a long tradition of small bore and miniature rifle clubs which by far exceeds practical shooting and gallery rifle. This was something you did at school or University and as such we have quite a diverse mix of shooters in the UK.
With that in mind for us Limeys, accuracy has always been a top priority hence we are the home of Eley ammunition. As a youth I would use nothing other than Eley Wasp airgun pellets they were visibly high quality, you could clearly see there were no imperfections in the manufacture of these pellets, they were simply miles ahead of the game in terms of consistency.Also it was encouraging to see an "inspected by" label on the inside of the tin to say that "Paul" had actually checked these pellets and ensured they were not rubbish.
These where not match grade just ordinary domed pellets
Airguns among other things taught me to closely examine what I feed my guns I became an Ammo Snob.
I would suggest a quality magnifying glass, and really look your ammo, prepare to be horrifiyed!
In recent years It became apparent that many ammunition manufacturers where cost cutting. Even Eley they sold off airgun pellet production and Wasps vanished from the market which is a crying shame for old airgun enthusiasts as we cannot get 5.6 mm quality pellets for our vintage British airguns
Even Eley club/sport is now garbage at least 1 in a box will misfire or have no priming compound, the heads look rough and un-lubed inconsistent velocities, dirty powder and cheap brass are the order of the day. Thankfully Tenex escaped this
Don't even get me started on Remington or Federal ammo, next time you purchase and therefore encourage this dastardly manufacture, just look at those rough, loose fitting heads that look like they were sand casted and made out of the hardest lead known to man, no more slimy lube because the snowflakes don't want to get dirty hands!
Bringing wet wipes to the range is just too much for some people!
CCI standard used to be exceptional, as did mini mag but after examining a recent batch of standard velocity I noticed many heads where actually malformed as clearly an obscuration had entered the press at the time of manufacture, Yet again CCIi where using coal for gun powder.
Even my beloved RWS Geko seemed to go downhill and had all of the above attributes, I remember the sales rep from Germany saying he felt embarrassed to sell such kakka, as we had an RWS sponsored shoot where 80% or the competitor's returned the ammo because it would not function in a Ruger or Buckmark and was rough,dirty and above all inconsistent.
It looked like the heads where from the Rmington bulk not the beautifully formed Geko which was a stalwart of almost every Gallery rifle shooter in the UK. Fortunately for me I was compensated with 5000 RWS rifle match
In the UK we used to use really decent cheap ammo such as RWS Geko and CCI standard. This stuff cost £1:80p a box and would happily put round upon round on the same hole without a problem if I used my Anschutz 54. Today things are a bit different.
Our Club secretary (Boss) is a bigwig in the UK NSRA and held several prone rifle records, he relayed to usused to regularly clean 100 with BSA Martini using supplied military ammo "grey box".
I believe this stuff was Eley as the cases have the "E" stamp on them and found them to be superbly accurate. I was even given a job lot of "Crammo" for next to nothing which contained a few gems such as ICI .22 shorts made sometime in the 60's judging by the box and a couple of "grey box" British .22 military issue along with some Canadian Military .22 I remember using the "grey box" Eley stuff as a cadet in the 2nd royal tank regiment (2RTR) it was outsandingly accurate!
Nowadays the only ammo I will feed my guns is quality SK + and RWS club for the Ruger and Tennex for my Ansuchtz, although the Annie really loved the SK bean can stuff too, just don't tell anyone!
RWS club was so good that I had only to misfires in 3 years of comp with the 10/22 it burns so clean its hard to tell if you even used the gun, I must have shot close to 50k rounds on the ciruit in that time, even cllub has become less consistant, it functions flalwessly but the groups are somewhat larger than they used to be.
However, the Ruger 1022 simply adores Tennex but my Wallet does not especially at £25 a box of 50 so its a Fiver a mag in the Ruger muhahahaha
It is quite easy to find good ammo, you just have to pay a tad more for it.I would encourage anyone else to steer away from the Remington Bulk or other trashy ammunition as you are only encouraging these companies to continue with this abhorant and most shocking practice!
The younger generation are at risk of never knowing good ammo at affordable prices.