A Carry Optics shooter and a PRS shooter can stand three feet apart at the same gun shop counter and walk out with nothing in common. One of them wants 9 mm by the 50-round box, minor power factor, something that will cycle a comped gun all weekend without a hiccup. Another wants 20 rounds of something heavy and slippery that holds a quarter-minute past 800 yards. Neither is buying what the three-gunner in the next aisle came for, which is a .223 Rem. load that will hit a 200-yard plate and shotshells that survive a box magazine.
Winchester’s argument, made this week, is that all of that can wear one name. Super Match launches with 19 loads across centerfire pistol, centerfire rifle and 12-gauge shotshell.
Seven handgun loads ship in 50-round boxes. The venerable 9 mm gets four of them, split between bullet profiles: 115-grain and 124-grain round nose, plus 115-grain and 147-grain flat nose. Winchester’s reasoning is the same argument shooters have been having in club parking lots for years—flat noses tend to punch cleaner holes and score better on the line, round noses tend to feed and cycle with fewer questions. Rather than pick a side, the company loaded both. Above 9 mm, the lineup goes to major: .38 Super Auto +P 130-grain flat nose, .40 S&W 180-grain flat nose and .45 Auto 230-grain round nose.
Every pistol load rides a high-sensitivity primer. That reads like a throwaway line in a spec sheet and isn’t. Tuned race guns with reduced-power hammer springs turn perfectly good factory ammunition into light strikes, and Winchester is telling you it built around that problem rather than around a test barrel.
Rifle forks in two directions. For gas guns, there is a .223 Rem. 69-grain BTHP and a 5.56 mm NATO 77-grain BTHP—heavy-for-caliber projectiles that have been the three-gun and service rifle default for decades. Precision shooters get seven more, all in 20-round boxes: .308 Win. with 168-grain BTHP and 175-grain BC Max options, 7.62 mm NATO 175-grain BTHP, 6.5 Creedmoor in 140-grain BTHP and 140-grain BC Max, 6.5 PRC 140-grain BC Max and 6 mm ARC 107-grain BTHP.
BC Max is the new component in all of this, a polymer-tipped bullet assembled on equipment Winchester describes as next generation and billed as the highest ballistic coefficient projectile the company makes.
Three shotshells finish the line, all 12-gauge. Clay and paper work gets 1-1/8 ounces of #7.5 at 1,235 fps, 25 to a box. Steel and multigun stages get nine-pellet 00 buck at 1,300 fps, also in 25-count boxes, plus a 1-ounce rifled slug at the same velocity packed 10 to the box. Thick-walled hulls and high brass heads on all three—trivia, until you have watched a soft hull swell inside a box magazine and shut a shotgun down with the timer running.
“Super Match is the answer for the competitive shooter,” said Kyle Masinelli, vice president of manufacturing at Winchester Ammunition. “The extensive line covers needs for all categories of dynamic action shooting competition, and delivers exceptional accuracy, reliability and consistency. Our product engineers collaborated with some of the best competition shooters in the world to develop this ammunition and deliver the best possible product for competitive and recreational shooters.”
Dealers have it now, nationwide and online. More details at winchester.com.
