Yes, I guess I am an “ammo snob”. I only shoot 2 calibers- 9mm (for my CCW/ personal defense) and 22lr (for practicing and is what my wife prefers to shoot). In regard to the 9mm, and from personal experience, I don’t shoot any aluminum or steel cased rounds, and stick pretty much new brass Federal rounds- much cleaner and very few bad loads (not knocking any of the other name brand loads available, this is just my personal experience). For 22lr, I stick with CCI Mini mags- have tried many other “name brand” loads and have had too many stovepipes or FTF’s- the ones I own that are 22lr never seem to have any issues with the CCI Mini mags. I clean my guns frequently and store them carefully, so the only conclusion I could come up with is that my 22lr’s (Rugers and Henry) like these rounds.
Ammo snob? Yes.
Target ammo I refuse? Winchester. All Winchester. I have had so many failures with winchester, so many out of spec rounds, with multiple contacts to Winchester customer support including pictures, mic measurements, pictures, lot numbers, without ever hearing back…I won’t shoot Winchester in my guns if you give it to me for free (seriously). I won’t even buy the Winchester branded 5.56 coming out of Lake City in recent years since they took that over from Federal because I don’t trust Winchester whatsoever.
I am extremely demanding of the reliability of my defensive arms. I refuse to write off malfunctions from defensive arms by the old “that was the ammo’s fault not the gun’s” thing. So I won’t just use whatever for practice/training, because any malfunctions or stoppages of any kind will seriously bother me. My current carry selection (some would call it rotation) has a combined 1 stoppage in over 10,000 rounds, and that 1 stoppage I do blame on the ammo and in the first 200 rounds when the gun was new with over 3k flawless rounds in that specific gun since then.
Target ammo I prefer: Speer Lawman. Been hard to find recently, but I have several cases still. Federal (all Federal). IMI. Magtech. Prvi Partizen/PPU. CCI.
Mostly I like the ATK brands, so that is all of the Federal and CCI/Speer.