Hornday Black ELD-M Quality Declining?

[Steve390Gold]

I noticed some troubling changes with the most recent lot of Hornady Black I had acquired from Cabelas last month....

Typically Black shoots right at 0.75 MOA at 100 yards and then about 1 MOA at 625 yards in my weapon. This has been over 200 rounds worth of data. Last week I revisited the 625 range yet again and noticed it was much more difficult than usual to smack the 4" gong and even struggled a bit on the 9". My best guess without shooting paper is that it was only grouping about 1.25-1.3 MOA at 625.... At the time I brushed it off to shooter error despite the winds being nearly identical to my last visit, at least until I processed the 40 rounds worth of brass. (The previous 200+ pieces of brass all fell within 5 grains of each other. 114.0 to 119.0 grains and over 85% falling into a 2 grain window.) The new 40 rounds of brass would vary from a low of 112.3 grains to a high of 120.1gr!! During trimming I also noticed that the rim on the case head would vary by a wide margin as well that wasn't present before. At this point I am almost ready to sell the whole lot of Hornady brass and switch to Lapua even though I'd have to start completely over on my load development....currently reloads are grouping around 0.3MOA at 100 and YTBD at 625.

Has anyone else noticed this change in Hornady BLACK?

[VASCAR2]

[Steve390Gold]

The temperature was about 55*F with a lower DA than previous outings and I had to add an extra min of elevation with the possible inconsistent lot (#3172992) than last time which was low 80s.

What throws a monkey wrench in that is that my previous outings at 625 showed that my reloads (using the same ELD-M 123) were about 1.5 minutes low from the hornady black. So in theory at least, the black should have shot slightly better with the lower velocity, unless the velocity decline was huge? LOL!

I ordered 5 more boxes from Academy last week when they were offering free shipping and the ammo was 16.xx a box. The boxes came from all over the southeastern US and include some lot numbers that shot well in the past and at least one box of a later lot than what shot poorly. I will report back and see how it all stacks up. (Lot #3172573 and previous to seem to shoot very well in my weapon.

Thank you for the input, it got me thinking a lot more.

[Steve390Gold]

I also MUST get a chronograph ASAP. Looking at the sporter magneto speed currently

[grayfox]

yeh, get the Magnetospeed - you won't regret it. I use it, there's no need to go downrange to set anything up. 'Course there's the lab radar also but the MGSpeed works great!
The Hornady black shoots well out of my 16"-er for me, not so much my other Grrrs. Maybe it's the lot-lot variations, I don't know...

[Commander184]

Time to reload!!!!!

[Sticks]

Hornady seems to be very temp sensitive. I've lost about 50fps since the fall. Used to be a consistent 2475+/-5 out of my 18" @70-80. Now it's floating around 2425 @40-50.

***ETA - Same lot #'s

[grayfox]

Sticks have you noticed that much sensitivity with the Hornady factory 123 sst load also? just curious...

[StoneHendge]

Hornady is pretty notorious for lot to lot inconsistency. I had 2 cases of 123 Amax that were different lots and they had different colored primers. The velocity difference was about 30 fps under like conditions. One lot had single digit SDs.

[Sticks]

Sticks have you noticed that much sensitivity with the Hornady factory 123 sst load also? just curious...

No. It clocked the same during the summer as the ELD, but once I verified that it would not group for crap out of my barrel, I quit tracking it. It turned into practice ammo.

[cb4017]

I've noticed a slight difference also. On the pic attached both are factory Hornady Black. On the right was ammo I got about 10 months ago. On the left a couple of weeks ago. You can see the primers are clearly different. Also the recent ammo has a flattened primer and has been stamped in hard enough to "crimp" the primer pocket. Haven't shot the new stuff yet.

Next time I take out my Labradar Chrono I think I run both head to head and see how they do.

[Steve390Gold]

Time to reload!!!!!

I already do and have a load that's grouping 0.3MOA so far that's a bit slower than factory black. However Black had been shooting so well that it was a nice backup should I not have any reloads ready when a trip to the range opens up.

My go to load is hornady brass, CCI BR4 primers, 29.8gr of CFE223 under a 123 ELD-M jammed 0.025" INTO the lands (just like the H Black does). The next change is to play with seating depth.

[Steve390Gold]

I've noticed a slight difference also. On the pic attached both are factory Hornady Black. On the right was ammo I got about 10 months ago. On the left a couple of weeks ago. You can see the primers are clearly different. Also the recent ammo has a flattened primer and has been stamped in hard enough to "crimp" the primer pocket. Haven't shot the new stuff yet.

Next time I take out my Labradar Chrono I think I run both head to head and see how they do.

INTERESTING!!! I had some SSTs from back in 2014 that had that exact primer/case as the one on the right, yet everything more recently looks like the left with the "crimped" primer. Oddly enough, it isn't really a true crimp as decapping them and hand priming the cases is no harder from the old design to the new. The SST is definitely not as slippery as the ELD-M despite Hornady's bc of 0.506 for both. (At 520 yards the SSTs were about 1.5 moa low from the H. Black.)

Definitely let us know when you compare the two to see if there's any difference.