HAND LOADING

Load 'em up!

Ammunition Loading Overview - Benefits of Hand loading

By Russ Chastain, About.com

Hand loading ammunition offers benefits for all shooters.

Whether you are a serious target shooter or not, chances are pretty good that if you're a hunter who uses a gun, you enjoy shooting. Loading ammunition yourself can be a great way to stretch your paycheck further while offering you the ability to fine-tune loads for better accuracy in your gun. It's also a very interesting pastime that can make the off-season months pass a bit more agreeably, and will probably make you a better shooter as well.

Let's take a look at some of the benefits of hand loading, or reloading, ammunition. Number one in many cases is the reduced cost of loading ammo rather than buying factory-loaded cartridges. I recently figured up the per-cartridge cost of loading ammo for my 222 Remington, and even at the very high prices charged by my local source of loading components (I've since found I can mail-order everything but powder and primers at a much lower cost), I discovered that hand loading cut my ammo cost in half vs. buying factory ammo at Wal-Mart.

Another benefit of hand loading is that you can "fine-tune" your loads to suit yourself, your hunting, and your gun. Most rifles will attain greater accuracy with some loads than with others, and a certain amount of experimentation is usually required to find a good, accurate load. Considering the prices of hunting ammunition today (depending on caliber and load, ranging roughly from $10 to $40 per box of twenty), trying out several different factory loads in your rifle can get mighty costly.

With the right equipment, you can load just a few rounds of several given powder/bullet combos, then head for the range and see which ones work best. Different hunting conditions and/or game likewise call for different loads, and hand loading allows you to easily tailor your loads to your gun and/or the game you'll be hunting... and just think how proud you'll be when you take an animal with ammunition of your own manufacture.

An Entertaining Overview

of the Hand Loading Process