What would you shoot first?

Shoot your best ammo first....... in self defense or a gun fight.

Use the cheap stuff for practice.

I’ve never understood the idea of shooting the poor stuff to practice, what good does that do? You perform the way you practice! How would you know if you were getting better if you can’t trust your performance with poor ammunition to be good enough when it counts. It all always counts, or you’re just making noise. That’s not all bad, but it’s not practice!

Unless the stuff is "poor" to the point of very measurable differences in FTF's, I also dont see the point in polarizing your ammo. I did it at first. Now I just buy whatever decent factory HP ammo I can get on sale. It doesn't have to be the absolute top dog designer stuff. As long as it has a fairly good reputation and I dont hear alot of bad stories, I dont obsess over it. I know I can shoot. I dont have terrible aim. That's the most important thing. I test myself, my guns and and my ammo routinely to make sure everything is working. I also dont believe that shooting 1000 rounds a week is necessary to have a very reasonable expectation of all three. Since shooting for self defense is sporadic, I am somewhat sporadic in my routine. I sometimes just stop randomly and spotaneously and squeeze off a few mags somewhere safe and leave. If I can do that and hit what I aim at, and the guns pretty much always go bang there's no reason to push everything. I can be satisfied that if that was actually a SD scenario, everything would pretty well have worked out
..unless someone else shot me first!

I try and shoot what I have the most of assuming that it all works about the same. This is for .22 ammo practice. I reload the best possible ammo anyway for centerfire rounds.

I tend to save my most accurate ammo for hunting and shoot the stuff that doesn’t group as well for plinking and shooting paper.

In this case, I'd say practice/plink the cheap stuff. Youll have better ammo available when it may count more.

I use all the cheap bulk stuff when I goto the range to kill sometime. Though even the cheap bulk is approaching mini mag in price. I have a ton of Mini-Mag, Stingers, and Velociters. I haven't touched that really at all other than try a small pack thru a new gun.

You have to define what you consider "best". Most of my life I have liked CCI MM best. Any .22 that was "finicky" would normally run better with that, if they had a choice. So panic before this one I had 10K on hand. Started buying .22 ammo I could find at good price from Rem, Fed, Win. Then when panic ended I kept buying CCI and shooting up the other. Now keep 20K and doing same again. Shooting other stuff first. Now if your guns do not care? Then it of course does not matter but, if your guns "prefer" something I would of course shoot that last and or if you were doing some hunting or competition shooting where you wanted the best. Like all the panics before this one too will end but no one knows for sure how long it will take to get panic buyers to stop.

I shoot the less expensive stuff (just doesn't make much sense any more to call it "cheap" ammo), mainly just for plinking and/or recreational use. That would include most bulk pack ammo and Federal Auto-Match ammo. If I want to get some more extensive target practice in then I break out to the more accurate ammo that I know will get me the results I want. This is with ammo like Wolf Match Target, CCI Standard Velocity, and CCI MiniMags.

oldest first

I don't see a lot of difference between those different ones when shooting in my guns. Some of my 22s will shoot some of those better and some will shoot others better. All function equally without issues, some are just more accurate than others in a given gun. I tend to match ammo to gun, even with higher grade target stuff.

You need to try what you have to know of it cycles. No way to know otherwise. If it gives me trouble I use it in a revolver.

Barbaroja said:

I tend to save my most accurate ammo for hunting and shoot the stuff that doesn’t group as well for plinking and shooting paper.

Click to expand...

Same here; and in today's climate, I have more of Winchester Wildcat, Remington Golden and Federal Black than I do of CCI Mini-mags and CCI Standard, so the bulk stuff get used first. ALL are very accurate in my K-22s, marlin 60, Ruger 10/22 and MKII

If it'll shoot minute of Necco wafer, that's good enough for me!

Oldest

I tend to shoot the older stuff first....however i still have 50 caliber cans with grandpas stuff in it (may he rest in peace). Some of the boxes have sticker price tags on them from Gimbles, Target, Sears Robuck, and Ace hardwares...a couple of mom and pop places.....Grandpa was a compulsive buyer of .22s and ill bet i have more than half of the brands under the sun. You have any clue of how many .22s fit in a fifty caliber ammo can??? Enough for grandpas lifetime and mine at least...

qwert65 said:

Oldest

Click to expand...

That is a VERY good point.

Not a question of first, but if you get stuck with no resupply, what do you want left in the end. Shoot all the bulk mess first. Shoot your best stuff sporadically with a little set back in reserve.

Bb guns, pellet rifles, 22s, then the good stuff. No a pellet rifle or bb gun isnt the same as"range time" but it helps. And best of all its cheap! Unless one is shooting competition pellets they are pricey.

Thunderbolt and Wildcat were always for plinking, Mini- mags for hunting.

Palladan44 said:

You have any clue of how many .22s fit in a fifty caliber ammo can??? Enough for grandpas lifetime and mine at least...

Click to expand...

5000 rounds in a 50cal ammo can.

kidneyboy said:

5000 rounds in a 50cal ammo can.

Click to expand...

Awesome, i didnt even count. I was going to guess around the 5k

My dad was a share cropper. I put food on the table with whatever was the cheapest. The local gas station sold .22 ammo by the each round. If I didn't have 45 or 50 cents I could buy 5 or 10 rounds. Never worried what brand they were, I shot a SS so also got by with shorts or longs. A short in the head of a rabbit or squirrel would work. Shorts were the cheap stuff then.
Use your shorts for small game, use your longs for fox ,coyotes and big dogs. Use your long rifles for SD , and if you run across a mad elephant or bear, use any of the three to shoot you buddy in the foot and run like hell.