[BigEd63]

.308 bolt action would be a good choice. Semi-auto, you'd better be able to stop and clean a couple of times a day because there are some really dirty ammos out there.

I think at one time I had some .308 Winchester (well technically 7.62NATO) that was Cech or maybe Romanian made for Syria. Sky Blue box ammo looked like it was a parallel production line along with 7.62x39 as the cases and primers had the same lacquer finishes. I was told it came from Syria.
Quickest corroding stuff I ever shot out of my FAL back in 1990. Right there shooting on an acquaintances range in the creek bottom it started to rust up the muzzle brake.

 

[backdoor]

Would have to limit to revolver since crap wont throw an auto regular. Guess a 357 would be my choice.

 

[PaleHawkDown]

I think at one time I had some .308 Winchester (well technically 7.62NATO) that was Cech or maybe Romanian made for Syria. Sky Blue box ammo looked like it was a parallel production line along with 7.62x39 as the cases and primers had the same lacquer finishes. I was told it came from Syria.
Quickest corroding stuff I ever shot out of my FAL back in 1990. Right there shooting on an acquaintances range in the creek bottom it started to rust up the muzzle brake.

If it was highly corrosive, it probably wasn't Czech. Even their "corrosive" WWII ammo is mild next to most. By the 7.62 NATO era they were primarily using non-corrosive powder, and eventually they switched to non-corrosive primers. In fact, I think they were among the first nations to do so.
I know Bosnia and Yugoslavia both had Syrian ammo contracts. Yugo stuff of a certain era is fairly corrosive, a little hot, and surprisingly consistent and accurate, in my experience. From the '80s on it has been pretty great, though.
Bosnian stuff is seemingly loaded with nuclear waste, a little smoky, inconsistent and corrodes almost on contact in Alabama's winter humidity. Breathing the smoke burned my lungs for a couple of days, too. (They make REALLY good 9mm ammo now, so I guess capitalism has been good for them.) It was the stinkiest "smokeless" powder I've ever experienced - even worse than that Hungarian ammo that smells like an electrical fire.
Romanian ammo used to be falsely advertised as "mildly corrosive", but as far as I can tell, that meant, "you have a four hour window to clean this, at best." I don't know if they provided ammo to Syria. Their 7.62x 39 sucked, but the 7.62x54r and Tokarev ammo I had were great.

 

[BigEd63]

Mildly corrosive is about like mildly pregnant.😛

 

[renegade2]

But with the crappiest ammo available? You'd need a rod to pound out the fizzles.

Plenty of sticks in the woods. Besides, I always buy cheap 22 (used to buy the milk cartons when they had them). I don't think I've ever had a failure to fire in thousands of rounds (I'm assuming we are talking new ammo, not some crap that's been left in a leaky shed for twenty years). If we are talking crappy old ammo...plenty of sticks in the woods.

 

[mouser868]

Due to the expense of the ammo, a 25-20.

 

[thebeav]

I got a stomach ache just reading some of the brands that have come up here.
I suppose, if it's a gun that I already own, I'd have to go with .223. I can just see myself jamming some sort of ammo into my Savage,,,,,,,,Ugh.....

 

[BarryHalls]

.308 bolt action would be a good choice. Semi-auto, you'd better be able to stop and clean a couple of times a day because there are some really dirty ammos out there.

I made this point in the store yesterday, PMC, or PPU or any other bargain brand brass case will tun for hundreds rounds in any bargain AR-10. Hundreds of rounds of 308 is a LOT of meat in the freezer, or a whole lot of carcasses of some kind. If I want to deer hunt at 250-300 yards with 6.5 grendel or 6mm arc or even 6mm/6.5 creedmore it's 3-4 bucks a shot, 5.56, or 7.62x39, it's wild hand loads and 24" barrels. With the .308 it's $1/shot and barrels down to 18" with the same level of confidence as those $4 and $5 shots in more niche calibers.

That and that cheap soft point .308 is in every store in the country. Those deer loads for other calibers are few and far between.

I might have found a hole in my collection.

 

[Oakleaf]

I guess I'd have to go with 22LR if it has to be a gun or guns I already own. It's small, sure, but if you shoot a deer or burglar in the right place... they're gone.

 

[animalspooker]

If we’ve gone to brands, I’m going Barnaul (Bear).

I have been really impressed with Silver Bear, both operational and accuracy!

 

[PaleHawkDown]

Plenty of sticks in the woods. Besides, I always buy cheap 22 (used to buy the milk cartons when they had them). I don't think I've ever had a failure to fire in thousands of rounds (I'm assuming we are talking new ammo, not some crap that's been left in a leaky shed for twenty years). If we are talking crappy old ammo...plenty of sticks in the woods.

Several times I have published my epic saga of why I won't shoot Winchester .22s. But the short version is that I had two boxes of Winchester 333 in a row that were duds. Out of the few that appeared fireable I got several fizzles that lodged in the barrel.

 

[PaleHawkDown]

Due to the expense of the ammo, a 25-20.

That's one way to do it. You could ad 38-55, 38-20, 38-40 and several "hard to finds" on there if you go that route.

 

[PaleHawkDown]

I made this point in the store yesterday, PMC, or PPU or any other bargain brand brass case will tun for hundreds rounds in any bargain AR-10. Hundreds of rounds of 308 is a LOT of meat in the freezer, or a whole lot of carcasses of some kind. If I want to deer hunt at 250-300 yards with 6.5 grendel or 6mm arc or even 6mm/6.5 creedmore it's 3-4 bucks a shot, 5.56, or 7.62x39, it's wild hand loads and 24" barrels. With the .308 it's $1/shot and barrels down to 18" with the same level of confidence as those $4 and $5 shots in more niche calibers.

That and that cheap soft point .308 is in every store in the country. Those deer loads for other calibers are few and far between.

I might have found a hole in my collection.

In this exercise, though, we're talking "crappiest" not "cheapest". We're at a weird point now that many bargain brands are great, but some of the name brand and no-name brand are a totally different story.
I've had two batches of Isreali IWI blow primers, several calibers of Winchester that were either filthy, wildly inconsistent, or made with such low quality brass that they didn't run reliably in semi-autos at all, Blazer aluminum case that stovepiped constantly in some of my guns, several American-made bargain brands that popped up through the years with questionable quality control, and several foreign-made ammunitions from Arabic and Latin countries that disapeared almost as quickly as they arrived.

PMC is "adequate" and PPU is somewhere in the top bracket.

Heck, the current "lawyer-loaded" rounds made by most American companies won't even cycle in nearly an entire generation of semi-auto pistols. I generally have had good luck with Remington, for example, but I can't reliably run a Mauser 1934, the average P08, or an entire continent's worth of blowback .32 and .380 pistols made between 1900 and WWII; but they will run on Fiocchi, MFS, PPU, S&B, Igman, MaxxTech, and MagTech - all far cheaper ammos. That's maybe a bad example, however, for the overall topic, but my point is that "cheap" ammo doesn't mean "crappy."

 

[renegade2]

Several times I have published my epic saga of why I won't shoot Winchester .22s. But the short version is that I had two boxes of Winchester 333 in a row that were duds. Out of the few that appeared fireable I got several fizzles that lodged in the barrel.

Was that old ammo? How was it stored. I have fired a lot of win. I remember when I could buy a box of 50 for $1.50.

 

[PaleHawkDown]

Was that old ammo? How was it stored. I have fired a lot of win. I remember when I could buy a box of 50 for $1.50.

Brand new. I've posted this saga several times now.

Short version:
Years ago, I was on the way to the farm and realized I had brought the wrong range bag. I didn't have the right ammo. Stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a box of the cheapest bulk they had, Winchester 333. When I got to the farm and opened the box half the bullets had fallen out of the cases, and most of the rest wiggled.
I pulled out a handful that looked okay.
POOOOW, piff, fizzle. Some were too hot, most were too weak.
When I got home I called Winchester. You can hear those details in one of the other times I've posted this. Long story short, they sent me a coupon for a replacement box of 333.
Went to Academy and picked up a totally different lot number. I should have opened the box in the store, but I didn't.
Got them home. Same story.
Called Winchester, got called a liar. Sent photos. Customer service manager calls me to apologize. I got a coupon in the mail good for one box of ANYTHING from Winchester and used it to buy a box of .45 Colt Cowboy.
The stuff functioned fine, but was the filthiest non-black powder ammo I've ever fired in .45. The stuff varied wildly in my chrony, too.

I swore off Winchester ammo for years until a similar situation popped up, and the only 12 ga. that town's Wal-Mart had was Winchester Super X. The third round I shot blew my intercepter latch, spring, and retainer out of the gun, and bruised my shoulder to the bone. This was dove loads.

Since having the store I have only bought Winchester when nothing else was available. I have had customer complaints about three brands of ammo in 13 years. One was Winchester 223.

 

[Oakleaf]

That's a scary story. I was target practicing with Winchester .410 bird shot not long ago and fortunately didn't have any problems, but now I'm probably going to worry next time I go out to shoot. I don't know how old this ammo is, though. It probably came out of the stuff I inherited from a late relative who was a big shotgunner.

 

[PaleHawkDown]

That's a scary story. I was target practicing with Winchester .410 bird shot not long ago and fortunately didn't have any problems, but now I'm probably going to worry next time I go out to shoot. I don't know how old this ammo is, though. It probably came out of the stuff I inherited from a late relative who was a big shotgunner.

Since my father passed, I have inherited his ammo. Winchester shot shells from the '80s and '90s and early 2000s seem fine so far. Something changed in the twenty-teens that still isn't fully resolved, I'm thinking.

I've mentioned before that my stockpile of '90s Remington Thunderbolts are great, but I bought a new box a year or so ago on the fly, and while I didn't have any issues, they are loaded a lot lighter than the old ones, and the bullets aren't seated as tight.

Sad to say, but I'm getting prejudiced against American ammo.

 

[renegade2]

Brand new. I've posted this saga several times now.

Short version:
Years ago, I was on the way to the farm and realized I had brought the wrong range bag. I didn't have the right ammo. Stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a box of the cheapest bulk they had, Winchester 333. When I got to the farm and opened the box half the bullets had fallen out of the cases, and most of the rest wiggled.
I pulled out a handful that looked okay.
POOOOW, piff, fizzle. Some were too hot, most were too weak.
When I got home I called Winchester. You can hear those details in one of the other times I've posted this. Long story short, they sent me a coupon for a replacement box of 333.
Went to Academy and picked up a totally different lot number. I should have opened the box in the store, but I didn't.
Got them home. Same story.
Called Winchester, got called a liar. Sent photos. Customer service manager calls me to apologize. I got a coupon in the mail good for one box of ANYTHING from Winchester and used it to buy a box of .45 Colt Cowboy.
The stuff functioned fine, but was the filthiest non-black powder ammo I've ever fired in .45. The stuff varied wildly in my chrony, too.

I swore off Winchester ammo for years until a similar situation popped up, and the only 12 ga. that town's Wal-Mart had was Winchester Super X. The third round I shot blew my intercepter latch, spring, and retainer out of the gun, and bruised my shoulder to the bone. This was dove loads.

Since having the store I have only bought Winchester when nothing else was available. I have had customer complaints about three brands of ammo in 13 years. One was Winchester 223.

Ouch! If I had that experience I'd hold off of it too! I have had a few wiggly bullets but I've never had any fall out and all went bang.

 

[Oakleaf]

I'm now worried that the Winchester .22LR ammo I bought last year is going to be screwy, although the bullets look OK. It was new ammo from the local gun store that also ordered my concealed carry gun for me. I haven't shot any of it yet. I had enough old stuff for the target shooting I've been doing.
The quality of nearly everything manufactured now, regardless of what it is, seems to have dropped drastically in the past few years, sadly.

 

[PaleHawkDown]

If they look okay, they probably are. Mine didn't even look okay.