Wolf 303 Brit review.....kind of

[jcornSS]

I've been reading and heard mixed reviews on this and was very hopeful it would be decent since milsurp 303 is virtually gone. I finally picked up a couple of boxes. The ammo looked very good. All 40 rounds were bright, shiny and looked uniform.

I went to the range yesterday with my jjco Lithgow. The barrel on this particular is like new. I took some hxp for comparison. The lithy consistently produced 3ish moa groups with it.

The rounds all went down range. They seemed slightly under powered compared to the hxp but not dramatically. The groups with da woof were about 8moa...... Pretty terrible.
More disturbing, about half of the rounds keyholed. If they went sideways fired out of my lithy with a nearly new barrel, how is a well worn LE gonna fair with them? Anyone else tried wolf 303? I haven't tried it out of any of my other rifles yes. I'm gonna pull a bullet here shortly.

 

[shadowsbane]

Probably too small of a diameter

 

[Jeremy2171]

The barrel may look new...but how is the throat?

If that barrel had cordite milsurp ammo thru it..it's ruined for any boat tail bullets..

I've got a new .303 barrel if you have a few rounds left over I'll try them out..see what happens.

 

[jcornSS]

I've got some pulled mk8 boat tail bullets that I reload and they shoot great out of this rifle.
This is a jjco rifle. From the looks of it, it's one that was put together in the US with new mix matched parts. I doubt it's had much cordite through it.

The barrel may look new...but how is the throat?

If that barrel had cordite milsurp ammo thru it..it's ruined for any boat tail bullets..

I've got a new .303 barrel if you have a few rounds left over I'll try them out..see what happens.

 

[jcornSS]

I got around to pulling 5 bullets from the wolf 303 ammo. The powder looked very varget like. Short, extruded grains, grey in color. Charge weight was consistent. All 5 were between 40.1 and 40.4.

 

[jcornSS]

The issue with the keyholing, I'm confident to say, is the bullet. Specifically the massive crimp they apply to the case, basically crushing the bullet. The crimped area of the bullet measured .302. Forward of the crimp, the largest diameter measured was .307. Behind the crimp, the largest diameter measured was .309 in one tiny ring just before the taper of the boat tail. Had the ruskies not crushed the living sh!t out of the bullet, this may have been some decent ammo.

 

[jcornSS]

For giggles, I load some mk8 boat tail bullets in place of the crushed ruskie bullets. Everything else was the original wolf components. The group was much improved. The round that went high right was most likely the last round and was my fault. My shooting glasses had fogged in today's humidity and my sight picture wasn't for sh!t on the last round.

 

[nbkky71]

Dear lord that's a horrendous crimp! You'd think he was trying to crimp a .357mag heavy load with that! I had thought about buying some of the Wolf Gold .303 ammo just so I can have the brass to reload with, but now I'm a little hesitant.

Mk8 ammo is great. I've got a bunch of surplus Mk8 that shoots great in my Long Branch No.Mk1*

 

[jcornSS]

Keep in mind, this is wolf steel cased, actually made by wolf. Wolf gold is made by prvi and is an entirely different thing. Prvi 303 is decent.

And yes, it seems the crimp ruined the bullet. Performance is acceptable with a mk8 bullet swapped in.

 

[jcornSS]

I bought an ammo can full of 1941 and 42 RG mk8 ammo a few years ago. Every round I tried, hang fires. I pulled the bullets and powder.

 

[nbkky71]

Every round I tried, hang fires

I too have the similar symptoms with my Mk8, but it's not every round. Most of my .303 shooting is limited to plinking off the bench, so it's not a big deal for me.

I actually used that .303 ammo to practice offhand shooting for a while. It reinforces a good position and follow through since you never knew when the ammo was going to go BANG! Could be instantly... could be a second or two later...