9mm - 115 gr FMJ - Estate Cartridge - 1000 Rounds

Video Transcript:

Estate Cartridge is another ammo brand that's part of the ATK family, along with Federal, CCI, and Speer. The Estate brand is normally associated with shotgun shells, but they also make pistol ammo under this banner, like this 9mm cartridge.

This load features a 115 grain copper full metal jacket bullet seated in a boxer primed reloadable brass case. The case is headstamped with FC, which stands for Federal Cartridge. It's the same headstamp found on the Federal Champion ammo brand. And in fact, it looks like the Estate ammo is simply a rebranded version of the Champion load.

Also like Federal Champion, the Estate 9 millimeter full metal jacket bullet is actually a copper-plated bullet. Functionally, the distinction is negligible, except that copper-plated bullets are not recommended for use with ported barrels. Otherwise, they perform about the same as a traditional jacketed bullet and even have a covered base, which makes them slightly cleaner for shooting in indoor ranges.

We used the Estate ammo with six different guns and didn't have any problems with feeding or reliability. Recoil was noticeably soft, but wasn't significantly different than most other brands of 9mm range ammo. Accuracy seemed to vary from one gun the next.

We shot some groups at 15 yards from a benchrest using a Beretta 92 and our hits were kind of all over the place. It's not surprising that this is a similar experience to what we had with the Federal Champion ammo we've previously tested. But we also tried shooting groups at 20 yards using a Beretta carbine and the group tightened up considerably.

For casual range use, Estate ammo seems to be a good bargain. It's among the most affordable brass-cased ammo available and comes from a company that's known for consistency and quality in all of their brands.