Some Ammo Really Sucks...

Took a new No4 Mk2 out to zero the other day and do some preliminary accuracy testing... I don’t have any handloads made up currently and since it seems Hornady has ceased production on their .303 Vintage Match ammo I went out with some Remington UMC 174gr FMJ thinking it should work. Yea I got it zeroed but I was shooting at 3-4 inches at 25 yards. My initial thought was, ok this gun doesn’t like boat tails. But regardless I decided to go home and put my Fulton no drill mount on with a K3 and try again. With the UMC ammo I zeroed the scope and still got roughly the same accuracy. So again, not happy... Because I was there I decided to see how bad it was at 100 yards and while I didn’t measure it was pretty abhorrent. I also brought out some of the Hornady Vintage ammo I still had and tried that at 100 yards. With that I got a 5 shot group measuring just over 1.5 MOA. So in the end I’m happy with the rifle but I’ll be damned if I ever buy Remington UMC again.

Can you find the PPU ammunition in texas. It's a good factory load and the brass is good for reloading.

Be aware that some combinations of rifle and ammo will shoot proportionately WORSE at 25 yards than they do at 200.

It is all to do with the behaviour of the bullet as it leaves the muzzle.

There are a lot of factors at play, but the big one is that Lee Enfields were built to use ONE cartridge. that is, the "ammo of the day". Every time the ammo was changed, most notably, from the old heavy, hard-jacketed Mk6, to the superb Mk7, they not only had to change the sight calibration, but the entire bedding setup and even the magazine.

If your barrel is one of the ones that left the factory with a barrel at the "high" end of rifling tolerances, It would probably shoot open-based Mk7 to military standard,. If not, it would not have left the factory.

Solid-based boat-tails are not what the rifle was built around.

Furthermore, if a steady diet of Mk7 CORDITE ammo was consumed in service life, there WILL be measurable throat (leade) erosion. This will also not be conducive to "bumping-up" a boat-tail to a close fit in the rifling grooves..

PPU and Barnaul have both advertised (and made) 174gn FLAT-based ammo and projectiles, in both "ball" and "sporting" configurations.

Failing finding any of that, there are two options: Find a manufacturer who loads flat-based 174-180 gn bullets and stock up, or, roll your own.

Here in Australia, one very small local bullet maker offers a flat-based hollow-point that closely mimics the shape and BALANCE of the Mk7. These also perform well in Mosin Nagants, Schmidt Rubins and Type 99 Arisakas. Whether these are exported, I do not know.

hi i use the hornady 312 “ diameter in my 1917 lithgow with very good results they are flat based

From the original post it's clear the rifle doesn't like those bullets. Possibly/probably different bullet shape from the same manufacturer would group well.

Don't condemn the ammo because the rifle sneers at it.

G’day Bruce,
Who would be the manufacturer that you speak of?

The bullet factory is that place google them not to sure on the exportation of components from Aus I use them they are good pills very uniform meplats used them in a as issued 1942 Savage No.4 in a walk up 3 range multi position 300yds/200/100 shoot at the SASR range in Perth against 40 other shooters and won so they do work. Think I brought 1000 of them a while ago then lucked onto 400 174 grain Highland pills long out of production so brought them as well along with 1500 174 SMK's before they went through the roof.........$'s wise

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Originally Posted by 30Three

Can you find the PPU ammunition in texas. It's a good factory load and the brass is good for reloading.

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I'm actually in Iowa now (Army moved me), but .303 British is a pain to find all over. Texas was a little easier but was usually 150gr soft points. Here the only LE rifle I've seen that I didn't own was a sportarized No 5.

I have used PPU before and out of a couple of my rifles it shoots decent. I usually reload, but don't have any cooked up due to recently moving. I did like to use Hornady Vintage as a baseline for accuracy to build off of, but I guess that won't be an option anymore.

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To clarify, Hornady Vintage is a boat tail design and shoots pretty well out of this rifle. So keeping that in mind I don't think the issue was boat tail vs flat base, I think the UMC ammo just is much lower quality as attested by the price.

Slug your barrel. Not all No. 4 Rifles have a .311" barrel. They can go to .315" and be considered ok.
The issue is the American manufacturers don't use the same diameter. Hornady uses .312" diameter or .3105". Sierra uses .311"(they make a .311" MatchKing). You'll have to measure a Remington bullet as they don't publish what diameter they use. Prvi uses .311". However, none of that matters if you have a .313" + barrel.
Montana Bullets makes several over .313" cast bullets that aren't stupid expensive.
In any case, if you're not reloading you have to try a box of as many brands as you can to find the ammo that rifle likes. But you must slug the barrel on any Lee-Enfield first.

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Originally Posted by Bruce_in_Oz

PPU and Barnaul have both advertised (and made) 174gn FLAT-based ammo and projectiles, in both "ball" and "sporting" configurations.

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PPU no longer list flat base bullet ammo for .303, only the 174 gn FMJ BT.

In the UK we only have 2 options for factory 303 ammo, either the PPU or Sellier & Bellot 180gn FMJ BT.
Never seen any other make of 303 for sale here in UK for target use.

I have seen Remington SP Core-Lokt hunting ammo in 303 for sale by one dealer in the UK, but you can't use that on most target ranges here.

Portuguese FNM stuff was available here at one time and I've still got some of the FB bullets they sold.

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Originally Posted by Mk VII

Portuguese FNM stuff was available here at one time and I've still got some of the FB bullets they sold.

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York Guns used to sell those, but not for many years now. I'm down to my last "oddment" of 30 bullets. I wonder why they decided on a bullet of 186 grns?

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Originally Posted by GeeRam

PPU no longer list flat base bullet ammo for .303, only the 174 gn FMJ BT.

In the UK we only have 2 options for factory 303 ammo, either the PPU or Sellier & Bellot 180gn FMJ BT.
Never seen any other make of 303 for sale here in UK for target use.

I have seen Remington SP Core-Lokt hunting ammo in 303 for sale by one dealer in the UK, but you can't use that on most target ranges here.

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Kynamo (Kynoch - UK manufacture) were manufacturing MkVII with flat based bullets.

Its the same in Ireland only S&B 180g and PPU 174g. I have seen Remington but never used it.
I have recently acquired some .303 MEN Surplus ammo, but have yet to try it out

**UPDATE**

So this weekend I went back out after swapping the scope for the rear sight I originally had on it. I took only the Hornady Vintage out with me this time and got the rifle zeroed proper. After which I took it out to 100 yards for five 5-shot groups. The worst I got was 2 MOA (3 out of 5 groups, so this was about average) with the best being 1.5 MOA... So yea, it was crappy ammo.

Now to start working up handloads.

Thanks for the final comeback on that...

3.5 MOA was pretty much "acceptance spec" at the factory.

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Originally Posted by Bruce_in_Oz

3.5 MOA was pretty much "acceptance spec" at the factory.

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SMLE TESTING
For the SMLE All rifles were tested for accuracy by the Small Arms Inspection Department at 100ft, and 10% were also tested at 600 yds. All rifles were fired from a special mechanical rest, known as an Enfield Rest, and a special Telescope layer was used for laying an aim. The Enfield Rest was designed to simulate the conditions under which a rifle would be held when fired from the shoulder, and was provided with hand wheel adjustments for laying an aim. Trial shots were first fired and, if necessary the foresight was adjusted laterally, or replaced by one of a different height, until the shots on the target were within the required limits. Five rounds were then fired, and four of the five shots had to be contained in a rectangle 1 inch broad by 1½ in high. Rifle which failed this test were rejected. At 600 yds 10 shots were fired, nine of which had to fall within a 2 foot circle.

No 4 RIFLE TESTING
For the No 4 Rifle, the accuracy test was the same at 100ft ten per cent of all rifles were then fired at 200 yds when six of seven shots had to fall in a rectangle 6in x 6in , the point of mean impact having to be within 3 inches of the point of aim in any direction. Ten per cent of rifles fired at 200 yds were again fired at 600 yds when 6 out of seven shots had to be in a rectangle 18 inches x 18 inches the permissible deviation of point of mean impact being 9 inches up or down, or left or right. Two per cent of rifles were fired from the shoulder, ten rounds being fed into the magazine by charger and fired rapid to test “feeding up” and ejection. After these tests the barrel was inspected to ensure that there was no expansion in the bore or chamber and that it shaded correctly from end to end. (Was not bent)

No 5 TESTING
The firing test to which the No 5 rifle was subjected was the same as that for the No 4 at 100ft. It was not tested at 200 yds but 10 per cent were tested at 600 yards when the acceptance was ten out of ten shots contained in a rectangle 36 inches x 36 inches. Two per cent of the No 5 rifles were also submitted to the same functioning test as the No4 rifle.


Throughout World War 2 much of the accuracy testing was done by women shooters who quickly became proficient at the job. To speed up the procedure, the telescope layer was dispensed with, and aim was taken in the normal way through the back sight. The .1 inch aperture in the back sight was too large for easily laying a correct aim at 100ft, and a small spring steel adaptor was used.

So, if one minute of angle is ROUGHLY one inch at 100 yards, a one inch group at 100 FEET would extrapolate to three inches at 100 Yards; pretty much three MOA.

Acceptance figures for service rifles of other "foreign" design were fairly similar.

Close enough for government work. Every so often, the stars, and the hand-fitted parts, would align and result in a rifle that would shoot the standard issue ball ammo into smaller groups. As the years passed, such oddities were separated out and tagged for "marksmen" and very soon afterwards, for conversion to "sniper" rigs.

A "sub-MOA", mass produced battle rifle would be an interesting thing to see in mud and sand. Anyway, looking at early tactics, rifles seem to have been regarded as expensive extension handles for bayonets. Bayonets (and cavalry sabres) were regarded as the "Proper" weapons of civilized warfare. Take a close look at the design of a Lee Enfield (and P-13 / 14, '03 Springfield, etc.) butt for a glimpse into the thinking of the day.

There is an old line about some early 20th Century military rifles:

"The Germans built a hunting rifle, the Americans built a target rifle and the British built a battle rifle".

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Originally Posted by Alan de Enfield

Kynamo (Kynoch - UK manufacture) were manufacturing MkVII with flat based bullets.

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if you reload, careful with that Kynoch stuff, primer cups have two holes, not one centre one. new depriming pin is about $8.00.

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Originally Posted by eggwelder

if you reload, careful with that Kynoch stuff, primer cups have two holes, not one centre one. new depriming pin is about $8.00.

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The stuff I bought certainly isn't.
It is Boxer primers (as per the label)

It is Boxer primed - but, is not reloadable due to the fact they used S&&B cases.