Miasmatic Review

Bad Ammo.

Yesterday Ktreva, Graumagus, my friend Bob and I went shooting. It was time to get some range time in. We had a great time and all had fun. Yet, to put a blemish on the day, we did have an incident early on.

I was at my station waiting for the next shooting break to put up a clean target. We had just arrived and the target on the stand down range was left over from a previous shooter. I figured this was a good time to get rid of some older ammo I didn’t like. In my ammo locker was a box of American Eagle .357 rounds. I had picked two boxes of this up about 6 months ago. The last time I went shooting I used the first box and I didn’t like the way it shot. It was dirty and the fouling kept gumming up the revolver.

I brought this box along just to burn it off, so I started shooting it. About twenty rounds into the box, the range officer comes over to me and asks what I was shooting. Of course I started with, it’s a Taurus .357 Tracker. He clarified he meant the ammo. To which I responded with, American Eagle .357. He then stated, “So you’re not using reloads?” No, these were factory loads. At that point, I asked him why. He told me that there was an incident and the guy next to me stated he got hit in the face with something from my revolver. Okay, it’s a revolver. Anyone that has ever shot a revolver knows that there is side discharge from the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. I apologized, and stated that the .357 does spray a lot.

The range officer said the kid stated something came off my revolver and hit the kid in the face cutting him. I allowed him to expect my pistol and everything looked fine. There was no damage to my revolver and nothing looked out of sorts. When the kid came back to get his stuff, he had a small cut on his right cheek. After asking if he was okay, I rechecked my revolver and the ammo. It all looked okay. I continued shooting, with the every couple of rounds having to wipe the fouling off the gun, the cylinder would start to not rotate. I also started paying more attention to the spray. Grau, who moved into the station the kid just left stated there was a lot of spray coming off the revolver. At one point I caught a burning ember on my hand while shooting.

Then on my second to last shot my revolver jammed. The cylinder would not rotate or open. Finally after some manipulation it opened and out fell a chunk of the copper jacketing from the bullet. It was a pretty good-sized chunk too, About 2 millimeter wide and 4 millimeters long. About this time, I started wondering if there was something wrong with my revolver. After wiping it down, I inspected it and everything looked good. The chambers and the barrel lined up properly; there was no play on the cylinder, any burrs or blemishes.

I figured I should try a couple of .38 loads from Aguila and see if I have any problems with it. If I do, I know then that I need to take the revolver to a gunsmith. I put 25 rounds through with out one problem. Next I tried some Remington .357 rounds to see what would happen. 50 rounds went through with out a problem. No fouling, reduced spray, no sluggishness on the cylinder. I was unable to duplicate any of the problems I was having with the American Eagle ammunition. We ended up putting over 300 rounds through it yesterday and only had a problem with the American Eagle.

I ended up having to fill out an incident report, apparently the kids father (Who was with him) complained, after they left the range. Poor Grau, Ktreva and Bob ended up having to sign as witnesses. Unfortunately, they didn’t see anything. Hell I didn’t see anything. I didn’t know there was a problem until the range officer came over and started talking to me. Now, I’m just waiting to see what this is going to turn into.

But I will tell you this; I’m never buying the American Eagle ammunition by Federal ever again. It was dirty, it fouled up my revolver and now with this I’m just going to assume it’s unsafe. Sure, I have no way to prove that what the kid said is actually what happened or that what hit him in the face even came from my revolver, but with the rest of the facts I’m going to assume it did.

So shooters, heed this warning, stay away from the American Eagle Ammunition.