I've been dealing with some small pistol primer troubles for awhile now. Some CCI primers were very hard and only my Marlin 1894 would set them off. For ammo that just has to work for self defense and hunting I use Remington or Federal. I still get maybe 1 in 200 that fail to fire. They act like they are hard primers with a small pinprick indentation. Sometimes they fire the second time and sometimes they don't. Even in cheap FMJ ammo from these makers a round with a bad primer is quite uncommon in my experience, maybe one in 3,000. The pistols used include an S&W 10-5, Ruger SR9c, Glock 19, and Kel-Tec PF9 and P32. All of them are in good condition and shoot great.
I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong here. My usual procedure is to resize and deprime as usual, then seat the primers with the Lee Auto Prime. Ordinarily I don't clean the primer pockets. I'm thinking that for important ammo maybe I should clean the primer pockets and seat the primers one at a time on the press. Perhaps the crud in the priming pockets is getting inside the primer, making it behave like a hard primer by cushioning the blow from the firing pin. Also, perhaps the Auto Prime is not too consistent about seating the primers square in the pocket. If they are even a little cockeyed maybe this would affect reliability.
Your thoughts and experiences? All my hunting and defense ammo is reloads because I don't like most factory centerfire ammo and don't shoot well with it.