Something To Think About - Practice or Not to Pr

With the close of the deer season fast approaching me,I have to go back to the drawing table with some tweaking with some my loads. Not add that we're currently experiencing a shortage with reloading components. This will be a very tough to do. I am curious to hear how some of your will handle this issue.
The saying holds some truth to it - Practice, practice and more practice is how we hone our shooting skills.

No worries. Have plenty of components. Plus a bunch of 22lr ammo.

It's going to be a long year. I have plenty of powder but am really short on primers, which I don't see coming back soon. I keep checking all the normal sites and have been able to pick up bullets occasionally but without primers there not very useful. I think my practice will be mostly dry firing as I will save what I have for hunting.

A good 22 in what ever platform your hunting guns are in allows lots of relatively cheap practice, to keep you in tune . Tweak what you have to with the hunting guns, saving enough component's back for the next few hunting seasons. We all want our guns to shoot to there potential but they don't have to shoot 1/4 in. groups to be hunting accurate. If you treat the 22 like your big bore ,give it all your concentration with each shot, the practice will carry over to the big bores. Every shot counts ,don't think of it as just a .22 but as a valuable hunting ,training tool.

X2 on that! 22lr 17hmr and 223 for me for most of the practice

I was laughed at for buying components when they were plentiful. But I'm not crying with those same people now. Two of them wanted to buy ammo from me yesterday. I told them, "Remember when this stuff was easy to find, and you said...."

Both apologized. Both can go pound sand, for now. I'll call them in a couple days, after it's sunk in.

Funny, just today I was pondering this same topic. I have a decent amount of ammo stored up and I dont currently reload but I also dont want to burn through the ammo I have stored.
I went out to local gun stores and some have ammo but not in great quantities or they are only allowing 1 or 2 boxes per customer.

Its a bummer. I like shooting my larger hunting guns and playing with different platforms but I dont think I will have enough ammo to play like I normally do at camp on the off seasons.

I have also been thinking about the awkward conversations I will have with my friends when I bring a gun to the range and have to tell them," sorry you cant shoot this because I dont have enough ammo to share."

Current guns times suck.

Hunting Practice.
I burn up lots of 22LR ammo through my Super 14 Contender barrel practicing. Cheap to shoot, and a great way to stay on top of your game. I am not worried about running out of hunting ammo any time soon myself.
However I do shoot Trap and Sporting Clays. Most of the people I shoot with buy factory shotgun shells. Trap and Skeet ammo has been out of stock locally for months around here. The guys who have been letting dust collect on the old Mec reloaders will probably need to get them dusted off, and oiled up.
I stopped by my semi local reloading supply store this morning. I was looking for some 22-250 brass. They had it in stock and I brought home a couple bags.
I also checked out 45 bullets for my 45GAP Glock. They had a box of Sig V-Crown 200 grain on the shelf. That was the bullet I was looking for. I would have bought a couple boxes if they had more in stock.
They did have a few primers on the shelf, but I could tell they were limiting sales to 100 primer trays.

Bob R

It?s going to be a year until we see components come back; typically 6-7 months after factory ammo is on the shelves,

From what I understand this shortage was a Three fold problem. The C19 Flue and 7 Million+ new gun owners buying ammo.
Then we had Remington which included the Ammunition Division going bankrupt. Vista bought them, but Remington Ammunition is not back up and running yet. Having Remington Ammunition down did not help this out at all either.

Next problem on the horizon, with Commie Joe in the White House and the Socialist Democratic Party in a position to vote through anti gun legislation we will see another surge in buying just as soon as they start passing bills we do not like.

This should be a wake up call for all of us to not let our supply's get low to start with. I stay amazed at the number of reloader's who still buy primers a flat at a time when primers were on the shelf.

A lot of us who experiment, buy bullets a box at a time to see how they work. We may also buy a pound of powder at a time, again to see how well it works in a particular application. We may end up using up some components that we did not find to be the best for the application to save the good stuff for hunting or more serious target ammo.

I am getting ready to fire form some 22-250 into 22-250AI. I did some thinking to decide what bullets to burn off fire forming. I do not want to waste any that I plan to hunt with. I remembered that I have a jar of Sierra Seconds in some odd weight like 63 grain soft points that I have had on the shelf for over 20 years. I am sure that I will not miss them, unless they end up driving tacks as fire form loads

Clinton went after guns in the '90s and paid dearly for it in the midterms. If Joe and the ho try it, I hope they get the same results. But unless the fraud gets cleaned up, we're screwed anyway.

I am a new to handgun hunting and currently have a Ruger SBH Bisley Hunter in .44 cal. I had a 40-yard shot on a smaller buck a few weeks ago that you guys probably could have made with your eyes closed but didn?t feel comfortable with it and ultimately let him walk. That got me thinking about getting a .22 to practice with in the off season and reading this thread confirms what I need to do but and not sure what route to take. Should I go for a Ruger New Model Single Six Hunter so the controls and weight are similar or does that not matter as much and pick up a quality .22 revolver and just practice?

Id go with the autos. Easier/faster to reload for more target practice fun. Id guess you just need to get the fundamentals down. Make it irons or scoped, however your BH is.

Ruger mk
Browning buckmark
SW victory

3 good choices and very accurate.

Shoot many many hundreds of rounds if you can find the ammo.

I like the Ruger Super Blackhawk. It's the only revolver I use for custom builds. It's a frame that's as tough as a tank. I also have the Single Six, and I think the training / practice transfers back and forth very well. The triggers are both very good, and this, in my opinion, is the key. The trigger control (Muscle memory) transfers to the large caliber revolver just fine. The Ruger Single Six IS a quality revolver. You'll enjoy it for small game hunting as well!

Reading this earlier prompted me to count and log my ammo this morning. Hopefully I can keep it organized and make sure I dont run too low on any one caliber. I also realized I was low on a caliber I thought I was well stocked on and had more of others then I was thinking.

I am sure many of you have been doing this for years but I have never felt the need.

About this time last year, I did some stocking up. Got plenty of stuff for my inexpensive practice setups, 221 Fireball for long range and 32 S&W Long in the 327 Federal for close range/open sights. I'm fairly comfortable with what all I have, but in hindsight there's several more things I wish I'd bought when I could get them: an extra 1k pack of all the primers I use, a pound or two of H110, and maybe another box of 22s.

Gonna keep load development to a minimum for the time being, too. Maybe just testing 100 grain XTPs/Accurate #9 in the 327 for coyote season, and possibly giving 240 grain XTP-Mags/H110 a go in the 460.

Butch Cassidy
The closer in feel you can get to your current set up the better. My single six did not preform well till I changed the grips to match my other hunting guns. You are trying to acquire muscle memory, so the closer in feel the guns are the better. Shoot every shot like its the only one you will get, not with the mindset that if I miss this I've got 5 more. A consistent repeatable grip, straight back trigger squeeze and proper sight alignment are constants we all have to work on. They are the foundations to accuracy. A good 22 lets you work on those without the blast and recoil.

I was pretty stocked up out of habit but wish I'd picked up more earlier on. Not too concerned about anything but the .22 LR supply. I have a fair amount but things could get tight by the end of the year.

Probably need to look at some .22 centerfires that can be loaded down to .22 LR velocities. Decent quality rimfire ammo is always a pain to get around here.

John

I just wanted to say thanks for all the advice you have given me. I've spent the last couple of days looking on line and at my LGS for the pistols that were recommended. I even looked at the S&W 41 but that's in a price league all of its own, as beautiful as it is. I'm still up in the air on what I'm going to purchase but I'm leaning more towards the the Buck Mark and the Victory due to the way they fit my hand. As I was going through this process, I did realize another benefit of having one of these pistols...it makes a nice survival gun for the backpack if things go sideways.

+1 on the survival gun Butch.

I was lamenting the other day that Ruger doesn't make 22LR versions of both the Super Redhawk & the Super Blackhawk Hunter. I would love those for practice/small game revolvers! I'm sure the market would be pretty small though. I enjoy my wifes single six but it's just not the same.

One of the reasons I chose S&W when I came back to handguns. I knew I would need a lot of practice and the 617 and 686 are nearly identical making switching back and forth easy, don't notice the difference until the hammer drops.