I like CCI Blazer Aluminum for target shooting. Cleaner than that Whinchester.

For self defense - I used to buy expensive ammo. Then I read a review 2 years ago about the Winchester hollow points (wal-mart sells boxes of 50 of them). The perfromance in tests were about the same as the expensive brands. Now, I keep this in all of my defense guns - whatever the caliber.

Although the majority of its 10K+ rounds have been WWB and Remington UMC, substantial quantities of el-cheapo Monarch (Academy's Croation house brand) and some CCI Blazer (mostly brass) and a bag of 100 reloads have all been digested without a burp.

Of all these many bullets, the only weirdness was two rounds of WWB that came out of the same bulk box -- they failed to chamber fully, either in my P99QA or in my Browning High Power. Slide wouldn't go all the way forward, lacking about 1/4"; rather than force it, I pulled the rounds, tried 'em in the BHP to determine it was the rounds, not the guns, and -- pitched 'em.

Dirty? My ranking of these, best to worst:

UMC, WWB, CCI, the reloads, Monarch Green box, Monarch Blue (Olive steel, lacquered). The blue-box Monarchs are so spectacularly dirty that it's almost fun: smoke, sparks, nasty odor, black sooty gunk in gun: almost like black powder.

My Favorite SD load with out a doubt is Federal 124gr. 9mm +p HST.

I did a little ballistic test with 147gr. 9mm WWB, Federal 124gr. 9mm Hydro shock, and Federal HST 124 gr. 9mm +P.

I fired 10 ea. into a plastic recycle bin filled with soaked newspaper (I know, I know, it's newspaper) and the results were very impressive with the HST.

9mm 147 gr. WWB, 10 rounds, 12-13" avg. penetration, 0 expansion out of 10

9mm 124 gr. Federal Hydro-shock, 10 rounds, 10" avg. penetration. inconsistant expansion.

9mm +P 124 gr. Federal HST, 10 rounds, 10 rounds, 13" avg. penetration, expansion was consistant with all 10 rounds, even the best 1 of the 10 Hydro-shok rounds shot did not expand as well as any of the HST rounds.

I wish I had a vernier to measure the results, but I don't.

Hope This Helps

Sigbear

Sorry, I forgot to mention the gun I used for the informal ballistic testing was a Walther 9mm P99c.

Sigbear

Interesting info. Thanks