Blemished bullets for load development?

[Slickhill]

I have bought very few factory first bullets in the last ten years. I scour the factory 2nds lists and do a little detective work to figure out what they are then buy a bunch when they get marked down even further.

Get them in and give them a quick once over to get rid of any with broken tips or any obvious defects and put them on my shelf at the loading bench with a label telling what they are. 99 percent of the time the only defect is discoloration.

I don’t shoot matches but I do shoot a lot out at my range and I’ve never had any wild inaccuracy or anything else that I’d attribute to bad bullets. I hunt a lot, usually kill around 50-100 head of pigs,deer,elk per year and all or nearly all with 2nds.

 

[Leaf Litter]

I have bought very few factory first bullets in the last ten years. I scour the factory 2nds lists and do a little detective work to figure out what they are then buy a bunch when they get marked down even further.

Get them in and give them a quick once over to get rid of any with broken tips or any obvious defects and put them on my shelf at the loading bench with a label telling what they are. 99 percent of the time the only defect is discoloration.

I don’t shoot matches but I do shoot a lot out at my range and I’ve never had any wild inaccuracy or anything else that I’d attribute to bad bullets. I hunt a lot, usually kill around 50-100 head of pigs,deer,elk per year and all or nearly all with 2nds.

I'm moving that direction also. I haven't noticed any issues with precision in my seconds, so paying 50 cents on the dollar or less for them is a pretty sweet deal.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

I've shot a lot of seconds. Both just shooting and hunted with them as well. No issues

That said. Watch it. Handfull of places are good at sneaking out seconds for more than the normal stuff sells for

Same, I have piles and piles of “blemished” bullets I’ve gotten from sps over the years. I load them and shoot them all the time. Never a single hint of an issue.

I saw a guy on a Facebook group saying he’d never use them because you could “never trust your groups”. That was about the most stupid thing I’ve ever read.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

I have bought very few factory first bullets in the last ten years. I scour the factory 2nds lists and do a little detective work to figure out what they are then buy a bunch when they get marked down even further.

Get them in and give them a quick once over to get rid of any with broken tips or any obvious defects and put them on my shelf at the loading bench with a label telling what they are. 99 percent of the time the only defect is discoloration.

I don’t shoot matches but I do shoot a lot out at my range and I’ve never had any wild inaccuracy or anything else that I’d attribute to bad bullets. I hunt a lot, usually kill around 50-100 head of pigs,deer,elk per year and all or nearly all with 2nds.

I’ve never gotten a single factory second bullet with a broken tip. All of the broken tips I’ve had were in older, factory sealed boxes, many of which came from the classified section here on rokslide. I’d imagine boxes just being tossed around, dropped in bins, bumped around while moving houses etc. for awhile the only 200g accubonds I could find were off the used market and often were older packages. At one point I was happy to find them with only 5-10 broken tips.

And also, I loaded and shot the ones with broken tips and never really noticed much of a difference.

 

[Leaf Litter]

Same, I have piles and piles of “blemished” bullets I’ve gotten from sps over the years. I load them and shoot them all the time. Never a single hint of an issue.

I saw a guy on a Facebook group saying he’d never use them because you could “never trust your groups”. That was about the most stupid thing I’ve ever read.

I kind of understand the "never trust your groups" sentiment if you're doing load development and are happy with the first good group, but I've shot hundreds of these bullets now and had zero issues. Eventually the law of large numbers takes over and you can start trusting what you see from repeated shooting.

 

[nm.otter]

I have piles and piles of “blemished” bullets I’ve gotten from sps over the years.

Forgive my ignorance, but who is SPS?

 

[thinhorn_AK]

I kind of understand the "never trust your groups" sentiment if you're doing load development and are happy with the first good group, but I've shot hundreds of these bullets now and had zero issues. Eventually the law of large numbers takes over and you can start trusting what you see from repeated shooting.

Like you I’ve shot tons of these, I’m sure I’m into the thousands and I still have a few thousand. For a while , I’d check sps weekly and order in bulk when they had what I wanted (mostly 180g accubonds, 180g partions).

I guess I don’t really care about group sizes on 100yd targets because it seems sort of meaningless in real world use. I just get on target then switch to shooting steel and rocks. I do t think I’ve ever actually measured a group or worried about one. But again, I’m not a target shooter. Of If I can make a decent group at 100 then I just roll with it. I guess now I’ve been using the same calibers/cartridges/rifles for awhile so it’s been a few years since I “developed” a load. I just load the same thing all the time. Same recipe etc.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

Forgive my ignorance, but who is SPS?

Shooters pro shop. It’s where nosler sells its factory seconds.

 

[nm.otter]

Thanks.

Still don't see them -- I keep getting links to Nosler and Midway -- and who's Joey?

Edit: Searching in quotes eventually got me shootersproshop.com, which redirected to https://www.nosler.com/shootersproshop (with a 404).

 

[thinhorn_AK]

Thanks.

Still don't see them -- I keep getting links to Nosler and Midway -- and who's Joey?

Edit: Searching in quotes eventually got me shootersproshop.com, which redirected to https://www.nosler.com/shootersproshop (with a 404).

It looks like sps is now just factory seconds on noslers website. For many years it has its own website.

 

[nm.otter]

I've looked at that before and was not particularly impressed with selection or price. Worth signing up for their email spam?

 

[Slickhill]

SPS used to be the place for incredible deals. I remember partitions for $12 a bag. During the Covid crunch they raised their prices enough that it was rarely worth watching emails and the site hoping what you wanted would show up.

 

[Firth]

I've never had a bad experience with factory 2nds although I know others have. The group in the picture was shot with factory 2nd 73 eldms. Imagine what I could have done with firsts.

 

[Andouille]

If these factory seconds 143 eldx have something wrong, then my 6.5 CM doesn't want them to be right! I have 400x seconds 175Eldx to shoot in 7prc soon amd expect them to be equally bad

 

[Jesse Jaymes]

I just took in some .338 Accubonds. I will shoot some vs 1sts today. On Larry's website it has no name. The packaging does say Nosler tho. I'll also measure some ogives and specs vs 1sts. But to the eye...I don't see anything.

 

[V00D00]

ive bought countless nosler accubonds, rdf, partitions, and eldx its basically all i shoot and hunt with. never had a issue getting .5-1 moa with factory seconds. with that being said im hardly ever shooting past 300 yds