stargeezer

My son picked up a box of Silver Bear .308 steel cased ammo as we were heading out to the range. It was the only .308 the LGS had on hand. When he fired his GRS he commented on how tough the bolt was to open. Since it's a pretty new rifle, I urged him to try some of my reloads, but he decided to go ahead and fire the mag.

On the second round he said it seemed a bit easier, but the third round did not want to unlock at all. After a bit of tugging on the handle, the bolt striped off of the case, leaving it in the chamber. We took a cleaning rod and knocked the case out and after not seeing any damage we fired my .308 reloads without issue.

First I wanted to warn others about this stuff and I wonder if he might have done any harm long term.

We put 30-40 rounds through it that day and like I said, no problems, but I've never had that happen before. I also refuse to use steel cased ammo in my guns. He had always poked fun at me being old fashioned about this point of view until this happened.

trigger creep

I am not a big fan of using ammo that isn't made in the U.S because of this, however, I have used hunting ammo from South Africa for a .303 British with wonderful results. This isn't the first bad experience I've heard with Russian ammo, so I generally reccomend staying away from the stuff if possible. I guess he won't question his Dad anymore on stuff like that anymore?

WSM

Steel casings get sticky.

bwinters

As inexpensive as the russian ammo is it is very tempting to use. It is due to misfires and split cases that almost all public shooting ranges in nj ban all russian ammo. It is not just a matter of they want to sell us or other ammo. These same ranges allow ammo purchased elsewhere. The ranges in northern nj ban alll russian ammo and any european ammo made in russia and china and other former soviet bloc countries. The exception is ammo made iby seiller and bellot in the czech republic.

stargeezer

At least S&B is reloadable. I hate finding brass thats berdan primed. What a waste!