I have the ST-15 16" mid length rifle. I shoot brass with no problems, but I bought a few boxes of Tul Ammo and had a few FTE...the bullet casing was stuck pretty good in the chamber (the extractor actually broke the rim off the casing) so I had to use a cleaning rod to get it out.

Has anyone shot silver bear ammo in their spikes tactical rifle? Or is there a certain type of steel cased ammo that runs great in a ST rifle?

I mostly target shoot and would love a cheap alternative to brass

I would try cleaning your chamber really good before your next trip with polymer coated steel. Here is a mnemonic for ammo like there is for alcohol.

Steel before brass, smooth as glass
Brass before steel, it will seal
(I just created it)

Brass ammo lets gas around the side of the casing and all over the chamber. If you shoot brass first, the hot chamber will have all that hot gas & carbon on it; which will grab the polymer coating of the steel ammo from Tula (or can soften the lacquer coating on other steel rounds). The zinc coated Silver Bear doesn't appear prone to this issue and will mix with brass better than other forms of steel cased ammunition.

When I go out, I only bring one type of ammo with me per rifle. And I always clean each weapon after a trip, regardless of the number of rounds fired.

After thinking about it, I think I'll just buy brass by the thousands...don't really trust steel (the rim that broke off actually flew into the lower receiver and the trigger/safety wouldn't function) and had to take it all apart

Thanks for the reply, really love my ST rifle...will buy a chamber brush and clean it good.

I used Tulammo FMJ and my spikes AR loved it. I had brass reload and tula mixed in 2 mags. No issues. The rest was Tulammo. Ran about 120 rounds of Tulammo , 30 rounds of regular 55 grain and 10 rounds of 62 grain penetrator rounds. No issues with my rifle. I bought the tulammo at walmart. My rifle setup has the Spikes Optimum 16 inch mid length CHF barrel and Spikes Nickel boron BCG . My buddy has the Spikes M4 LE Carbine 16 inch regular barrel reg spikes BCG , He ran Tulammo too. No issues . He was skeptical about the steel ammo at first too. But after running it with no issues he loved it. Maybe you got a bad batch . You can get a bad batch of brass too. It happens sometimes. So far I have run close to 500 rounds thru my spikes with no problems. Thanks Spikes Tactical. Im already thinking of my next build.

I shoot wolf (from aimsurplus) almost exclusively through my AR. It works fine. Only 1 time did I have a problem and I think it was because of what Chris said. I was shooting brass before steel. Over time, the steel is sooo much cheaper. Especially if you like to shoot a lot.