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You sometimes see on shooting forums someone asking if some ammunition they have that is 10 or 15 years old is safe to shoot. I was out on Sunday shooting some ammunition much older than that. I was shooting my Mannlicher carbine using 1940 dated Bulgarian 8x56R ammunition, so 85 years old. I shot 25 rounds and they all went off as they should. I have over 500 rounds of this and it shoots well with just the very occasional very slight hang fire. I checked it with the Garmin and over the 25 rounds it gave an extreme spread of 88.3 FPS, and average velocity of 2308.5 and a SD of 21.1 FPS. This is from a 19 3/4 inch barrel. In contrast, I shot 15 rounds of Magtech.308 Win fresh from the shop that had an extreme spread of 111.2 FPS and an SD of 31.2 FPS.
I shot the target at 100 yards. Someone with younger eyes than mine would tighten the group up but I thought it was OK for me and my eyes. There were a few strays where I lost focus, but not too bad. Not sure why the target photo is upside down but hey ho.
Regards
Peter.

I’d say that was pretty good, certainly good enough to take out an enemy

Good shooting

It is genuinely nice to see shooting being enjoyed.

Thank you

On the flip side of this is have about 250 rds of Syrian 7.5x54 French from the 60s/70s in believe and it just doesn't go bang at all, the primers are long past there sell by date. But put the powder and bullets into a PPU case with new primer and its excellent stuff, groups better that new factory PPU Ammo.

Years ago I had a Winchester Model 1903 semi-automatic rifle chambered in .22 Winchester Automatic. An old guy at the club gave me a handful of old copper cased rounds of unknown age. Of those I tried only about 10% went off - the rest I pulled and scrapped.

Redcat

Hello
I always used to shoot Mil Surp Yugoslavian 8mm Mauser dated from the the 50s came in card board boxes and was held in stripper clips not seen it in a while now, it was cheap as chips, and shot very well, down side were the corrosive primers, and this should be remembered when using old ammunition.