Last October, a ranger at Antietam had difficulty opening the chamber of a Remington 870 shotgun to eject the last of a series of ten rounds of 00 buckshot that he had fired. When more force was applied to open the chamber, the brass base of the fired shell was ejected but the shellâs plastic shot column remained in the barrel just forward of the chamber. The plastic was removed from the barrel with a finger. This ammunition was purchased in January 2008 and 89 rounds have been fired to date by the park with only one malfunction.
Based on the similarities between this problem and a recent problem at Shenandoah, the NPS firearms program office at FLETC was contacted and referred Antietam to Gary Gronfore at Federal Cartridge Company, who is also working with Shenandoah.
Antietam was using Federal Premium BallistiClean 12 gauge 00 buckshot, Lot # 14V695 (Shenandoah was using Lot #14V692).
If you have ammo from either of these lot numbers, you should not use it on the range and should contact Gary Gronfore at Federal Cartridge Company. Federal does not currently offer a green buckshot round, but will offer a credit or will replace ammo from the above lots with an equal value of ammo of your choice. Gary Gronfore can be reached at 800-322-2342 ext. 3705 or Gary.gronfore@atk.com
Based on these recent casing separations of Federal shotgun ammunition it is recommended that federal shotgun ammo be closely inspected prior to use, and that future purchases of shotgun ammunition, both lead and lead-free, come from Winchester or Remington until the cause of this problem is better understood.
If you have further questions, donât hesitate to call either Gary Gronfore or Jill Kinney, firearms program manager, at 912-261-3762.
Please continue to report firearm and ammunition problems to the firearms program office.
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