Shouldn't be as much of an issue with semi autos. Thanks for the update. Nice of Hornady to make good on it.

thanks dude, good to know they hooked you up

Well, I have an Update on this issue.

 

To those who have some of this ammo sitting around either for a rainy day, self defense,or zombie apocalypse - Do yourself a favor and fire a few rounds off to make sure they function properly.

 

-Alec

 

Thats one of my biggest pet peeves with a lot of defensive ammo marketed to civilians. 20-25 rounds a box. Can't even test a full 15 round magazine to get a sense of how it feeds. Just have to shoot 5-10 and hope it's a representative sample of the lot that it's from. That's what I like about the Winchester Ranger Ts & Speer Gold Dots. 50 rounds a box. Shoot a mag, or even two, and still have enough to fully load a G19 Mag.

Good idea Harry, I shot off an email to Hornady just a moment ago, Hopefully I will see a response by tomorrow.

The Lot # is 3110983

Caliber and Model# : 357 MAG 125 Grain FTX / #90500

 

I have the exact same ammo and lot#. 10 of 10 plugged. Seriously plugged, and ended my range time twice. I fired five, the plugged. I cleaned the gun and tried again, plugged again. So it happened in my squeaky clean ruger lcr 357. I think i will call the manufacturer. Thanks for posting.

Thats one of my biggest pet peeves with a lot of defensive ammo marketed to civilians. 20-25 rounds a box. Can't even test a full 15 round magazine to get a sense of how it feeds. Just have to shoot 5-10 and hope it's a representative sample of the lot that it's from. That's what I like about the Winchester Ranger Ts & Speer Gold Dots. 50 rounds a box. Shoot a mag, or even two, and still have enough to fully load a G19 Mag.

 

Buy another box....

 

however, I would personally put at least 250 to 500 rounds through my gun before being satisfied that it is without issues.

 

What does 15 rounds tell you about a gun? Probably nothing when you are trying to determine the reliability of your firearm and characteristics of how the round shoots.

 

OP, I am glad Hornady took care of this issue.

Good CS from Hornady. I also agree with Maks what does one box tell you about reliability? Are you willing to bet your life on ammo that you are not absolutely 100% sure will function in your piece? How can 20-30 rounds be a sufficient test? Look what happened to Alec and he was firing a revolver.

This is one reason why testing ammo for reliability is important even in a revolver. You are not only looking for proper functioning in your gun, but some measure of reliability of your batch. Rather than buying a single box of 20 rounds, I would purchase a quantity of a couple hundred rounds at least, shoot some for reliability test of that batch, and keep the rest for defense.

 

I would also add that since no LE agencies use Critical Defense, you do not get the benefit of ongoing quality control enforced by major contract holders. This is one of many reasons I prefer to go with modern loads that are actively being used by LE such as Gold Dot, HST or Ranger-T

Good CS from Hornady. I also agree with Maks what does one box tell you about reliability? Are you willing to bet your life on ammo that you are not absolutely 100% sure will function in your piece? How can 20-30 rounds be a sufficient test? Look what happened to Alec and he was firing a revolver.

 

I was really speaking more in terms of testing the lot a given box of ammo is from. As demonstrated by Op's experiences, even well respected ammo manufacturers will still have some bad rounds roll off their production lines. No amount of prior testing is enough to completely eliminate the chance of a bad box, so I like to shoot a decent portion of each box at the range as a sort of final QC on the rounds that I'm going to keep read for self defense. With boxes of 25, running a full 15 round mag of it at the range leaves me with only 10 rounds, and I don't care for that.

I was really speaking more in terms of testing the lot a given box of ammo is from. As demonstrated by Op's experiences, even well respected ammo manufacturers will still have some bad rounds roll off their production lines. No amount of prior testing is enough to completely eliminate the chance of a bad box, so I like to shoot a decent portion of each box at the range as a sort of final QC on the rounds that I'm going to keep read for self defense. With boxes of 25, running a full 15 round mag of it at the range leaves me with only 10 rounds, and I don't care for that.

This is why I buy defense ammo in 500 or 1,000 round quantity. I doubt production issues will vary by box, but they can by lot.