Sunday, May 31, 2009

Prvi Partizan ammo test

I'm not a bad marksman, but my riflery skills are kinda corroded.

So when I wanted to know what kind of accuracy could be expected from the Prvi Partizan and Fiocchi .308 ammunition that I had bought, I enlisted the assistance of fellow Raven Eric Eisiminger. He's been to a couple of long range shooting classes at Thunder Ranch as well as a passel of other courses out there, and has a really nice box-stock Remington light tactical rifle topped with a Leupold scope that is just the thing for this sort of shooting. We fired two loads in his precision .308, a 168 grain open tip hollow point match load by PP and a 150 grain soft point hunting load from Fiocchi. The results were very surprising.

(click pictures to enlarge)

While it's true that the two initial groups fired with the 168gr load were the first of the day when Eric was just warming up and getting into his groove, nothing prepared us for the accuracy of the 150gr loading in the third and fourth groups.
After seeing the results, he decided to try again and bear down with that load, and came very close to putting 5 rounds into 0.5 inch in the next group. I was spotting for him and I said
nothing to jinx him and tip him to how well this group was going, right up until the flyer with the last round!

Bummer!

Still, a very nice group. Note that three rounds went into that one large ragged hole!
Properly motivated by then, Eric loaded up with the 168gr cartridges again and gave it one more try, getting this group in his last attempt -

At slightly over one inch, it wasn't nearly as amazing as the groups from the 150gr load but would be adequate for general purposes and for training use. Precision marksmen (okay, snipers) generally demand accuracy of under one inch with their duty loads and in some rifles this round might do that, but not in Eric's Remington and not on this day.
I didn't have either my .308 Remington 600 or Savage Scout with me, having brought the FAL in order to test some other basic milspec ball that I'd bought at the same time as the two other loads, but given that my Savage is a very accurate rifle I would expect it also to do well with any of these.
In the FAL with iron sights the accuracy of the 150gr PP ball ammo was typical and it functioned without any stoppages, so we can add that to the data base. We'll have to conduct accuracy testing on it another time.

And what may we conclude from this abbreviated exercise?

The Prvi Partizan and Fiocchi ammo I've examined to date in all calibers appears to be of very high quality and is at least the equal of commercial ammo currently being made in the USA.  Fiocchi is now producing a lot of their ammunition in the United States in a bid for more of this market, and they appear to be quite serious about this effort.
The cases in all of the three types were annealed and clean, the bullets were free of visible defects and the accuracy ranged from adequate to amazing! There were no failures to fire and no problems noted with any of the ammunition.

The PP 150gr ball ammo would do very well for general tactical requirements in a semi-auto such as the FAL.
The PP 168gr would suffice for training for precision shooters and possibly actual duty use in some rifles.
The Fiocchi 150gr load would do for just about anything you'd like in a .308!

I'm gonna get more of all three of these, and the Fiocchi ammo in particular, if and when I can ever find any of it!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the nice little review! I'm gonnatry out the PP in a fews days I guess... they are surprisingly cheap and if they really shoot adequate, they might make up a good training ammo.

Ciao
Alex