Wolf Ammo-Opinions?

[Arub]

Walt:

The poll seems like an excellent idea, especially the part about only those who have experienced first had problems replying. Thanks for volunteering to take on the project. I'm 'computerally challenged' and setting up a poll might be more than I can handle.

Bob

 

[Jammer Six]

You respond only if you've EXPERIENCED problems, yourself.

The poll seems like an excellent idea, especially the part about only those who have experienced first had problems replying.

The question remains whether US- and Western European-made guns can shoot Wolf over extended periods without harm. Some say yes, and some say no -- and many of those answers are based, at least in part, on experience with the ammo.

Such a poll would be meaningless.

There are two separate issues.

If only people who have had problems with Wolf ammo respond, then you will find that 100% of the people in the poll have had problems with Wolf ammo, and the only question that would answer would be what type of failures among those having failures occurred most often.

There must be a denominator.

You need a column for "No problems using Wolf ammo".

(There is another issue, how many rounds were fired by those with no failures, and how many rounds were fired before a failure occurred, but let's not even go there- lets try to solve the basic flaws in this poll before we go all scientific.)

Then restrict your poll to only those who have actually fired Wolf ammo from a Western Bloc centerfire handgun.

That will solve the first problem, and establish a rate of failure for Wolf ammo. If the rate of failure is extremely high, say, 94% of those using Wolf ammo have trouble, then it's reasonable to conclude that there's a problem with Wolf ammo.

You can't get that information unless you include people who have used Wolf ammo, under the parameters of the poll, successfully. Then you can say that out of so many people who have fired Wolf ammo, this many people had failures. That's considerably different from saying "We ran a poll, and only allowed those who have experienced problems with Wolf ammo to respond. What we found was that all who responded to the poll had had problems with Wolf ammo."

This kind of restriction is only valuable if you're looking for the breakdown of the types of failures that happen with Wolf ammo. It certainly doesn't answer the question of whether Wolf ammo can be used in Western Bloc weapons for extended periods of time without harm, which is the question you state that you are interested in answering.

The second problem is to determine whether or not this rate of failure is significant relative to other ammo. This will be more difficult.

To continue our example, if Wolf has a 94% failure rate in Western Bloc centerfire handguns, that is signifcant.

Unless Winchester White Box has a failure rate of 97%, and PMC has a failure rate of 98%. Then Wolf has a good failure rate, and is fine ammo.

I'm interested in the answers. I just bought 500 rounds of .45 Wolf for my two weapons, and I'd like to know these answers.

 

[Walt Sherrill]

Some of your comments were appropriate -- but if you saw the survey, you'll see that some of them weren't needed. And I'm not sure the results would be meaningless. Just of questionable value.

was NOT an attempt to be SCIENTIFIC. Just an attempt to structure the responses, a bit. You overlooked even bigger flaws -- quickly pointed out by those who looked at it. The most important one: I set the limit too high!

It doesn't take 500 rounds to know you want or don't want to shoot a particular ammo.

(It only took me two or three boxes of Amercan Ammo in .45 to swear off that stuff forever! I saw enough bullet setback -- caused by the bullet hitting the feed ramp! -- to scare the crap out of me! I bought a couple of packages of 9mm at the same time, and some of it was so badly out of spec it wouldn't even feed in my Browning HP.)

The other problems with the survey that you overlooked are probably as basic as the issues you brought to our attention:

1) The poll isn't ever going to be meaningful in terms of determining anything CONCRETE about Wolf ammo, because the sample here can't be shown to be representative of anything except folks who participate on The High Road, take part in our polls, and have shot Wolf. There may be millions of Wolf shooters who have a totally different set of experiences with their ammo and guns.

2) there aren't any REAL controls: the results can be skewed because the response can be answered untruthfully and, within some limits, more than once. (I consciously set the poll to allow multiple answers, so the totals while equaling 100% don't represent a true picture of the "total.")

All this survey can do is show that the widespread complaints about Wolf MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be justified and are arguably based on more than rumor or conjecture.

(But, alas, we can't even be sure of that.)

 

[cool45auto]

I use it exclusively in my SKS and my Ruger KP97DC. I don't mind the cleaning and haven't had any problems.

 

[No Man]

I've shot Wolf in a variety of handguns and rifles, and have yet to experience a problem--not a single misfeed, failure to extract...nothing.

 

[Jammer Six]

2) there aren't any REAL controls: the results can be skewed because the response can be answered untruthfully and, within some limits, more than once. (I consciously set the poll to allow multiple answers, so the totals while equaling 100% don't represent a true picture of the "total.")

Sorry, Walt.

When I responded, I hadn't seen the poll yet.

Since you seem to be aware of the flaws in your poll, I'll shut up.

As it happens, I replied to your post, and then left for the range. At the range, I fired 200 rounds of Wolf ammo through one of my weapons, with the following results:

15 rounds failed to feed, broken down into 6 "Nose Up" failures, in which the round attempts to enter the chamber, and goes "Nose Up", and wedges with the nose of the round against the top of the chamber, 4 failures to return to battery completely, and five stovepipes.

In addition, I had 7 double feeds, and two failure to ejects.

In addition to that, I had four rounds that failed to fire, and then fired when I re-loaded them, and two more rounds that failed to fire when I reloaded them. Since I'm a coward at heart, I didn't reload them a third time, because I was afraid.

That's 28 malfunctions in 200 rounds, a 14% failure rate.

In your poll, I get to count twice, Failure to Extract, and Failure to Feed. I have voted accordingly.

At last, someone who recognizes my true value, and counts me twice.

The only other point was that I was there testing the weapon, which has been unreliable since the day I bought it, and I thought I had narrowed the problem down to the magazines, but it's clear that that isn't the case.

 

[forquidder]

poll voting

I've used wolf ammo on about 100 occasions with no problems. So I voted accordingly in the poll

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Just kidding.

 

[Ky Larry]

I shoot the heck out of Wolff ammo in my AK-47. No problems so far. I don't shot it in anything else.

 

[alwims]

GEEZ, did I open a can of worms or what? Thanks, guys and gals for all the info and answers. I'm sure curious about the poll, as I really want to see what kind of problems people are having with Wolf ammo so I'll know what to look for and be able to make my own conclusions as to whether or not I will continue to shoot it. As I said in my original post, it sure is accurate out of my .380 and my .45.

 

[Zundfolge]

alwims, its not going to destroy your gun to run a box or two through it.

I've shot a bit of it and I don't like it, I was shooting it out of a Steyr M40 (pretty tight tolerences on that gun) so I couldn't shoot a lot without a quick cleaning, I also shot a lot of 9x18 out of my Bulgarian Mak (loose tolerences and a commie gun to boot) I had pretty much the same results out of both (more jams with the Steyr but a God awful amount of dirt in both).

Just pick up a couple boxes of each caliber and see how it runs ... at worse you'll hate it ... at best you'll have discovered some cheap ammo you'll like for practice.

At any rate, you're not going to die from Wolf

 

[Akurat]

The simplest answer I can give you:

Rifles: yes
Handguns: NO

 

[Brad Johnson]

Here we go again....

Wolf Mythbusting (based on sound, scientific principles and experience, not heresay and something heard from "a friend's cousin's girlfriend's college room mate")

Myth #1 - Wolf ammo will wear out your extractor because of the steel case.

No. It won't. The cases are coated with laquer and it's this laquer, not the case itself, that comes into contact with your gun's innards. The laquer is nice and soft so there is little chance of the steel "wearing out" anything. The only extractor problems I've seen with Wolf were not ammo problems at all, but user problems (like dropping the slide on a chambered round instead of stripping a round from the mag as you're supposed to do).

Myth #2 - Wolf ammo is dirty.

All ammo is dirty. Wolf does leave a lot of residue, but no more so than Bulls Eye, Unique, or W231 (which is so sooty it makes Wolf look like a breath of fresh air). If you clean your guns regularly (and you do, right?) it is no worse than some other commercial ammunition.

Myth #3 - Wolf ammo will gum up your gun because the laquer will come off in the chamber.

Possible, but not likely. Unless you are one of those gun owners who subscribes to the "I don't clean it till it jams" theory of gun care it's unlikely that you will ever have a problem. On several occasions I've fired 500+ rounds of Wolf 9mm through my XD with no functional problems. You could see a tiny bit of laquer residue starting to build up, but a quick swipe with a patch soaked in Hoppes #9 wiped it right off.

Conclusion

Wolf ammo is not some mystery gun-destroyer. It's just another inexpensive brand of ammo that has gotten a bad rap due to a lot of misperception combined with a generous dose of misinformation, supposition, and uninformed hype. While it's true that guns with "tight" chamber dimensions tend to be finicky when it comes to Wolf ammo, most guns will digest it just fine.

Will it work in your gun? Well.. buy a couple of boxes and try it. If you don't have any problems, buy a boatload of it and blast away.

Brad

p.s. Could we please have the word "Wolf" automatically trigger a 1,000,000 volt charge through the user's keyboard each time it's typed in?