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Any Ammo to Avoid with my Benelli M4?


Amsdorf

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I never said the military should use birdshot or target loads. I do remember saying that an M4 will fire what it was designed to fire, good thing for the Marines. You can interpret what I said however you want, whatever floats your boat. I am not suggesting that anybody breaks in their M4, or any shotgun for that matter, with weak loads. All I was saying was the possible reasoning behind any malfunction from firing weak ammo. FROM MY EXPERIENCE. That is all. YUP, I have a high end shotgun and YUP, I sometimes use it for skeet and FUN. I won't anytime soon be using OO buckshot for shooting clays so WALMART here I come!! :)

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All I was saying was the possible reasoning behind any malfunction from firing weak ammo. FROM MY EXPERIENCE. That is all.

 

No, what you were saying to benelliwerks was that there is some magical kinetic energy that makes the bolt retract, extract and then feed the next round when placed against a properly stanced individual...all while firing rounds less powerful than the weapon was designed to cycle.

 

There is no "malfunction" from firing weak ammo. A malfunction means something is wrong with the weapon. There is a failure to fire, failure to feed or failure to extract due to the firer using low pressure ammunition.

 

And I'm not making you out to say anything, I'm telling you what the gun was designed for. What you use it for is your business, the OP asked what ammunition to avoid and you bring up stuff that is good to know and experiment with but not when you are familiarizing yourself with the weapon right off the bat.

 

It clouds the waters when this should be a fairly straight forward answer to the question "What will not work reliably in my M4?" If it's designed for a specific pressure, use rounds with that pressure or higher. Simple.

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That being said... When I use my magic stance and hold the gun correctly I've had nothing but 100% reliability with my M4 while using cheap weak ammo. Have a good day. :)

 

I am not discounting using cheap stuff if you can make it work, good on ya, but not when you're starting out.

 

.......... :)

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I'm still unsure of your little adventure through this thread. The whole "breaking in" thing was brought up by... not the OP. He simply said he's a new M4 owner and was asking about ammo for his gun "BASED ON USER'S EXPERIENCE". I said my 2 cents about cheap ammo. You said yourself that it is useful information to know... You came back with your manuals and what the gun was built for... and I came back with my experience with the OP's type of gun and some information on specific ammo that I have and use for shooting clays. This is a forum and it's about sharing information. I have something to say and yes, based on my experience (which I pointed out) MY M4 WILL in fact fire anything that I put through it. In my experience the shooters position of the gun and stance DOES make a difference with those light loads (which you clearly pointed out the gun is not designed for, thank you so much). I agree with you 100% that a new gun should be broken in with heavy hitting loads. I've said what I wanted to say and I hope the OP can take from it what he wants. It's just too bad for you that I crossed your boundaries of what you find acceptable to this topic that was not started by you.

 

It clouds the waters when this should be a fairly straight forward answer to the question "What will not work reliably in my M4?" If it's designed for a specific pressure, use rounds with that pressure or higher. Simple.

 

Let me answer that.... EVERYTHING will work reliably in my M4. A shooter's knowledge of his weapon is a great thing. What a wonderful place the Benelli forum is as a source of information.... take from the forums what you want, look past what you choose you don't want and move along.

Edited by Super33
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Well, coming back to the point....

 

I had a great range session with my M4, and put a LOT of heavy 00Buck through it then some cheapo game loads.

 

Worked great, not a single problem, and yes, I was behind the shotgun.

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Got to add my 2cents. I have fired over 100 rounds of all types of ammo specifically to test out my m4 in concern regarding my reading that the m4 has had failure to feed issues. After test firing 2 3/4'' and 3'' rounds, everything from #7 to 00 and yes slugs, I have not had a single fail to feed. Some rounds were old ****** rounds and some New out of the box.

I do however, agree that if you are not behind the gun it Could possibly cause a fail to feed as the energy would be directed elsewhere other then the action of the gun. Check out “magpul dynamics art of the tactical shotgun” for good tactical shotgun techniques. I highly doubt that a marine would have this issue as they would not be thinking about their stance during combat. This would have been drilled into them prior to seeing combat. At least from my experience that is how things tend to work in the service. You are not going to be going through a check list of "what to do's" when in a fire fight. You rely on your instinct! Therefore the idea of Practice..Practice..Practice is far more valuable than most casual shooters would think.

 

:)

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Skeet shooting with the M4 Tactical...awesome. Poor skeets, the little guys hardly stand a chance.

 

Update on my experiences: just put about thirty rounds of 2.75 Fed 00 Buck through it, not a problem. Ghost loading worked great.

 

Still have not gotten my magazine extension, but....shooting seven in a row was fun.

 

I was shooting them as fast as I could pull trigger in our large gun club's combat pit and had an older gent make a point of coming over. He simply said, "What the heck are you shooting?"

 

Fun conversation.

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Let me answer that.... EVERYTHING will work reliably in my M4. A shooter's knowledge of his weapon is a great thing. What a wonderful place the Benelli forum is as a source of information.... take from the forums what you want, look past what you choose you don't want and move along.

 

How are those LTL rounds working out in your M4? Don't be a clown.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 7 years later...

Personally, when brand new it would shoot 00 buck with no problem.  #6 high brass bird shot would cycle about 70 to 80% of the time.  Cheap old 12 gauge #6 low brass would cycle about half the time.  The half the time the old junk would cycle was when  I was really leaning into it like they taught me in LE.  In the military I suppose they told  us to lean into it as well, but it was so long ago I would not swear to it.

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When teaching my son how to shoot a shotgun, he had a hard time "getting behind the gun". Recoil was violent, and shooting was unpleasant.

I unloaded the gun and had him square up against a tree in his shooting stance. I put the barrel up against the tree trunk and told him to push the tree over with the front of the barrel.

His foregrip immediately changed position

His feet immediately changed position

He moved the but pad closer to his chest

And he leaned forward into the tree.

The rest was history....and I never needed a chainsaw ever again....?

Edited by Jolly Roger
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  • 1 year later...

Well, it's 9 years after the previous thread. I am expecting my new M4 to arrive in few days. I think I know what I will be using to break it in.  Unfortunately I strained my shoulder last week installing a ceiling fan but I am far too excited about the new shotgun to let that delay me. Good thing I have some Tylenol 3s on hand for afterwards LOL  

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The M4 is specifically designed to be insensitive to hold, unlike the M1, which certainly is. And thus the M4 was born.  I can/have fired my M4s un-shouldered with just about everything, including low FPS, without issue. Only the shorty shells are a thing and that is because they are just too short.

Now, about those military manuals. I'd be interested in a link/upload

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On 7/2/2012 at 8:09 PM, Super33 said:

That being said... When I use my magic stance and hold the gun correctly I've had nothing but 100% reliability with my M4 while using cheap weak ammo. Have a good day. :)

What he said,  I ran some crap today and was flawless. 

20210620_131430.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

The M4 was designed for the US Marines with a very strict specification. It can easily handle most anything but the shorties and that is a mechanical feeding issue. Including birdshot. It was never designed to shoot from the hip Rambo style but many people do it successfully. That is the point of a gas action. It does not suffer the challenges of the M1 regarding firm hold and mounting of weapon lights. (I've got two of each with 10k's of rounds each, with a Daly copy thrown in for good measure) I can hold the M4 quite loosely and it fires light 24 dram loads box after box. The M1 will never do this.

To the OP - cheap ammo is just fine for break-in and training. Ultimately do train with full energy loads. If you happen to somehow find a load that will not cycle the action, no harm done. Just use appropriate safety protocols. 

To those who can't get the gun to cycle - you've got the best defensive/offensive shotgun in the world. It's hard to defeat it. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I hear a lot about the need for a secure mount to ones shoulder and with shooting position on various Benelli shotguns. When I first bought my SBE in 1995, I would have failure to feed (FTF) issues when using less than 1oz DRAM. It would fire, eject the empty, then close on an empty bolt. They said it simply lacked the energy to push the bolt back to release the next round from the magazine. I found that was true because if I ghost loaded, it wouldn't do that for the one round.

 

So, I grabbed several of my inertia guns to give them a test. For this, I grabbed a M1T and M3T folder both with 18.75" barrels I believe. I also grabbed a 20 gauge Montefeltro and a HK era Super Black Eagle. I figured the SBE, having the longest stroke and still having original weight springs (since I shoot 3.5" every fall while hunting), would be the first to fail without proper positioning.

All of them I fired 2 magazines through them for a baseline. The shells are what I use for dove and quail each fall. The 12 gauge are Federal 1 oz DRAM #8 shot. All fired as expected. So, I repeated the first test on all of them with the gun against my shoulder, but not pulling back into it. Again, there were no failures. So at this point I decided to skip straight to extreme to save on ammo. I held the gun down across my body in the front, shooting to the left. I provided what was required to hold it, but zero resistance to the shot. It acted like a pendulum. The M1, M3, and Montefeltro all still fired normal. However, once again likely due to its longer bolt stroke, the SBE struggled a little. About once per magazine (of 5) I'd get what I described in first paragraph where it would fire, eject the empty, and close on empty bolt. Once again, as I found in 1995, ghost loading would prevent that from happening for that one additional round.

 

I tried to make it as scientific as I could for this informal inertia action tests. I did not fire any of my M4's. My 11711 is staying in the box unfired, and the other one was clear in the back of the safe. I might try it at a later time and add to this if anything stands out. Gas guns shouldn't be effected by the support (or lack there of) at all due to the way they operate. However, we know that it does effect some guns. I couldn't find my recoiling barrel shotgun. I thought that might yield interesting results too. It's just as well. It was getting dark and the 'skeeters were horrible at my place that night.

Edited by bambihunter
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I shot two mags of birdshot #8 off the hip with my M4 and 1301 the other day.  Both ran fine.

SBE3 runs anything.  Shoot a lot of cheap walmart Federal 100 packs at skeet.  Never has a problem.

I do keep my guns lubed up.  And clean after every range trip.

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I've seldom had hang ups with S&B sport slugs and maybe buckshot. I'd trust my life to a variety of Federal buck and slugs. Some cheap plinking ammo is fine but for training and reliability, I'd say it's like premium gas and exotic cars. Quality ammo for a quality gun.

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