I received my American Hunter yesterday. I see that Speer and not Federal is now making the Hi-SHOCK line of bullets. They are also going to make it avaiable for reloading. I wanted to try these but they never hit the market last year. They look like a great deer bullet.Anyone have any up to date info on this.
Posts: 1111 | Location: Edmond,OK | Registered: 14 March 2001
My understanding is that Federal was/is a loading company and not a bullet-making company. This means that Federal bought bullets from various bullet manufacturers and loaded them into their (Federal) ammunition.
Speer was originally a bullet-making company. But more recently they've also gotten into the loading business, loading their bullets into various finished loads.
Posts: 5883 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 11 March 2001
Hi-Shock or Deep-Shock?? I know it seems like I'm picking nits, but really I'm not. Federal has called their in-house bullets "Hi-Shock" for years. Awhile back, a new development called "Deep Shock" got some favorable press, and it looked like a great bullet design at a very reasonable cost, but it was pulled as soon as it hot the market. If Speer is going to make the Deep Shock that is great news. Note that Speer and Federal were both recently purchased by Alliant when they bought the entire Blount Sporting Equipment Group.
Rob, if this is true I'm thrilled. I posted here some time ago that Federal sent me several boxes of pre-production, 30-06-180 grain "Deep-Shok" cartridges. I penetration tested, sectioned, and re-loaded them to test for accuracy... I was extremely impressed. They're a simple design, but I'd rank them up there with most premium bullet based on my trials. They're accurate, penetrate well (all were perfect mushrooms) and retain over 80% of their weight.
Until recently, Blount owned RCBS, Speer, Federal, Weaver, among other subsidiaries. Federal is a manufacturing plant that makes brass, powder, and primers. Speer makes bullets and loads with Federal brass marked Speer. They also use Federal primers and powder. Now, all of the shooting sports divisions of Blount have been sold to Aliant Technologies. Rumor has it that Alaint just won the contract to run the Lake City manufacturing facility for the next 10 years. They needed cartridge manufacturing experience, so they made the deal with Blount.
Posts: 425 | Location: Minnesota, USA | Registered: 01 April 2001
