Hunting Ammo Poll

My future son in law called me. He is going hunting and can't find ammo for his rifle. Told him come over to the house and I will fix him up. Gifted him a Compass Rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor and we loaded up enough of it's favorite diet for practice and the season. He will practice with it this weekend. Finding ammo is hit or miss around here.

H&Hhunter said:

I am a 100% load my own for CF rifle ammo. While I’m not low on anything yet. It’ll be an issue if we don’t start seeing some primers and powder in the next couple of years.

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Same for me, except I have enough components for hunting loads to pass it along for several generations. The only reason I put any dent in my hunting inventory is that I invest the same load development effort into it as I do my target loads. I will work up a new load every season

Which reminds me, I need to get busy

I can work up a custom load that performs better than factory and then make a couple hundred or so to have on hand for hunting.
I gifted a 300win mag to my son in law. It came with 120 hand loads and load recipe.

dh1633pm said:

My future son in law called me. He is going hunting and can't find ammo for his rifle. Told him come over to the house and I will fix him up. Gifted him a Compass Rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor and we loaded up enough of it's favorite diet for practice and the season. He will practice with it this weekend. Finding ammo is hit or miss around here.

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Believe that's pretty much the norm everywhere now!

jmorris said:

I have some rifles that a 20 round box of ammunition might last a number of years. One shot to confirm zero and another to bag the animal repeat x 10. At least that’s the concept. I always prefer to have more than I need, just incase, so I wind up with boxes with just 2 left over.

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That said, I too reload and not sure the last time I took a non bird game animal with factory ammunition. Might have been out of the box above.

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Love those old Silvertips. I think I've got a box for my .338 Win Mag someplace. Probably collectible by now.

Being a reloader, I'm a bit blessed in these times. I did have to do some shuffling this off season. My standard LR primers are no longer imported, and the Speer bullets I favor are non existent. Fortunately, I'm hunting deer at relatively short ranges, so substitute standard components were good enough for government work. I guess for standard hunting loads, I could go several years. Glad I don't have to shoot factory

I've got a bunch of reloads that I'm very confident with, for my 270, as I've harvested quite a few mule deer as well as a couple of elk. But this is the first year I've hunted White Tail deer in MO. with my eldest son, and the fact I've just purchased the 6.5CM in Ruger, and although I've shot some handloads thru it, I noticed just the factory Winchester in 129 grain was a bit more accurate. In fact at 100 yards it was shooting 3 shot clover leaves. Anyway just before season started I had a full box of the Winchester Whitetail with the same item # as well as 6 cartridges left of the original box, so it was a no brainer on which ammo and rifle combination I was about to use last Saturday on the opener. Thankfully it proved positive as just one shot put him down like a ton of lead had just hit him.

Its a combination for me.. I used to buy a bunch and have kept them stored properly over the years, but now with the wacko shortages, loading my own again.

I answered that I have enough components for 10 years. Actually I've had to buy some bullets in a few calibers but they were available on line. Luckily I had the foresight to pick up a few thousand primers and some powder pretty much every time I saw it over the last 10 years. That should last me as long as I want to reload. Now where was that foresight when I investgated bitcoin 7 or 8 years ago...