Winchester Supreme Elite XP3, 300 WSM, 150 Grains

Comments about Winchester® Supreme Elite™ XP3®, 300 WSM, 150 Grains:

I purchased a box of the .300 WSM XP3 150gr. ammo for a 2011 mule deer hunt. I was shooting it in a Savage Bear Hunter, and I had a hard time keeping my groups under 1.5 inches at 100 yards. The other problem I experienced was that it was binding in the chamber after the round was fired, and required a fair amount of force to extract the spent round. I brought the gun home and cleaned it thoroughly to see if it was simply some fouling that was causing the feeding problems. On my next occasion to fire this gun/ammo combination, the rounds were still binding in the chamber and very inaccurate. I decided to inspect each of the remaining, loaded rounds to determine if I could find any obvious flaws that would explain the binding and inaccuracy, and I noticed that the neck on two of the cartridges were cracked from the mouth of the cartridge and down the entire length of the neck. This is the most likely explanation I could find for my inaccuracy and feeding problems.

Upon finding this out, I contacted Winchester to notify them of the faulty product, and I have yet to hear from them after a year's time. For a product that is in the higher end of the price range, I was very disappointed with this ammo. I have used Winchester ammo before and been quite pleased with it, but my experience with this ammo and the lack of any sort of response from Winchester has made me switch to Barnes, and the rifle cycles perfectly and consistently shoots 1/2 MOA 3-shot groups at 100 yards.