No disrespect intended.

I'm sure it varies. Person A might shoot 5k in competition every year, and Person B may shoot twice that and never enter a formal match of any kind. I don't think there's any sort of universal answer out there. With 3 million odd AR's out there, there's going to be a variety of different kinds of shooters out there as well.

I poke holes.

In paper. I've gone through tens of thousands of round in just two+ years.


Oh yes, if you mean finanacially, It hasnt been cheap.
Some poeple drink, some smoke, some do drugs, some gamble....
I shoot.

Might be right but components can't be found very easily either. I am no competitor but up until the craze I was buying and shooting in pretty good volume (just fun) and the cost to benefit of handloading (of which I an avid handloader) just did not work given how I value my time and the relatively low cost of 223 ammo. As such, I have a rather large amount now stored for when I return to the States.

Are you a AR/223 shooter?

I have several 223 rifles and find it easy to run 100 to 200 through three or so of them each range trip. Punching paper, hitting some Tannerite, or shooting holes in say an old dryer to hear that metal on metal sound is just fun. I do reload and buy my 55 grain bullets by the 3K most times. Sure glad I keep a normal 2 years use of bullets stocked ahead. I have slowed down using them in the last few months as I only shoot what I can resupply. A note here that my single shot NEF 223 gets used a lot more these days as ammo consumption is WAY lower per range trip.

jim in Anchorage said:

I would think a serious competitive shooter would use handloads only. I am not stating that as as a fact, just a guess.

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My small sample size of Service Rifle competitors is some reload, some use factory.

I routinely go through about 5000 rounds a year of all flavors. The rate depends depends on what my objectives are at the time but usually a hundred or two rounds at a session satisfy my shooting urges. Of course, I just have to step out my back door to shoot so going to the "range" is quick, easy and frequent.

Also, I reload.

I no longer shoot a lot of .223 but at one time I probably shot as much as anybody.
At the time, I was into "tactical type drills". Again, at the time, I was attending a lot of formal classes and I was practicing the various drills and senarios we shot at the classes. And, I did it a lot. Things like El Presedente, box drills, failure drills, shooting on the move, going from standing with the rifle on a sling to some other position quickly: that kind of stuff.

Keep in mind that at the time I was doing this, Wolf ammo in .223 was $69/per 1000 round case. So the price of ammo was inconsequential. I am a die-hard handloader, but when I was shooting mountains of .223 I never bothered. Wolf was cheap enough, and performed more than good enough for what I needed. Why take the time, let alone chasing the brass.

I shoot only what I can replenish now and always keep atleast a reasonable amount on hand for unlikely situations where i'd need it.

I've been finding .223/5.56, 9mm is that hardest by far to get.

Blasting can rabbits, bottle birds and box bunnies here.

I never bring but filled water jugs to the "open" space as there are certain to be plenty of targets of opportunities due to the dolts that think that everything they bring up there magically gets converted to dust cause the next time they come up they don't see it for our efforts to keep the place clean and open.


But, that's it except for periodic sighting and re-sighting at the Gun Club.

We all know that a tin can is one of the finest targets made by man and it's called Plinkin'!

In some days gone by it would be easy for 4 friends to blow out half a case......easy! That's with a dozen other guns to boot.

After I pull the trigger, little recoil, so sights are still pretty much on target and another rd is automatically loaded in the chamber. Why not pull the trigger again?

Honest answer is it's much cheaper to shoot than other centerfires and if I shoot the barrel out (that's going to take a wile assuming no rapid fire) I can buy one and install myself. If I'm going to spend much time shooting, I'll typically carry a .223 with me.

BTW, I haven't shot any factory .223 in a long time. Costs too much.

Every time my buddy and I went to the range we took our AR-15s and about 400 rounds or more apiece. He had purchased a large quantity of surplus ammo (military contract overrun), and I was using commercially reloaded ammo from Black Hills and Ultramax.

My personal high water mark for .223 use came when I was regularly taking non-shooters out for range days. The deal was that they paid to get into the range, and I supplied the guns and ammo. .223 was ideal because I had a nifty AR with EOTech, a mini-14 in a folding stock and peep sight, and a single-shot break action (encore) with a scope, so I could show people a little of everything. Everyone had fun and a few went and bought guns. That slowed down/basically stopped when the ranges got so crowded nobody was willing to wait for a lane, and at the same time ammo prices shot up/availability went down.

So... I guess fun, but there was a side of 2A advocacy.

Another category that can burn up gobs of ammo in a weekend is "training", which is another fun-kinda.

Unintended Consequences

See Ed, it's your own fault.

You introduced all these people to shooting. Some of them went on to buy guns of their own and they in turn introduced other people into shooting some of which bought their own guns.

Now you can't get into a range or buy ammo.

I bet you didn't understand what events you were going to trigger.

I don't think I can claim all the credit.

I must bare my soul and admit I have no AR, just a mini 14.

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No shame there. I've owned several of each and prefer the Mini 14/30. I don't waste ammo during a shortage(I don't water my lawn during a drought either),I use just enough to stay in practice.

P-dog shooting with my Rem Varmiter can run 200 rds a day, and thats bolt action. Getting me to a range with an AR would easily run through 3 Xs that amount.

Sorry friend but when someone starts the conversation with the phrase "No disrespect intended." I find it usually means quite the opposite. But to answer your question.

Practice.

Training, 22 adapters for large bores saves money while still letting me use the same trigger.

Letting new shooters have a pleasant introduction to the shooting sports.

Stress relief.

Rimfire/20 gauge three gun, it is a blast (pun intended). Try it if there is a match near you.

There are more but to put a cap on this post:
Because I can!

I like to shoot a couple of mags of 5.56 and then move to handguns. One starts to see dollar signs rising in the barrel smoke. If you were smart, you stocked up before all the hubbub.

jim in Anchorage said:

But how do you guys chew though thousands of rounds of .223 and always looking for more? Is it just fun shooting or competition? Serious question.

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Mag dumps.. not to be confused with Large Marge.

My range days end with me looking like this:
http://godandgunsblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hot-shots-2-charlie-sheen-29901707-1500-2281.jpg

Most of the AR shooters I've seen at ranges have been just blasting away. Now, I haven't been to the range much lately, I admit, and especially not since the big shortages hit and the ranges got crowded (post SH)/

If I had an AR, I think it likely that I'd be very tempted to burn through a lot of ammo pretty quickly. I think a lot of shooters do just that.

If we're down at the farm shooting and messing around we could easily go through 500 or 600 in a day. Multiply that by however many times we go and it can add up.

We just mess around...plinking from 20 to 200 yards.