When I was 12 years old, I walked into the toy store to buy some 22 ammo, but I ended up borrowing $50 from my best (older) friend and walked out with a rusty old mil-surp Mauser 98 with a rusty barrel. Probably circa 1908, and not a spec of bluing left on it, but to me, it was like finding a diamond.
Since it had likely fired a million rounds of corrosive ammo and still had battlefield mud inside the stock, possibly from the Russian front, there wasn't much could be done with the bore, but was rescued from the dead with a spare '06 barrel... but then reality hit me...
Now I had to make a choice. I could continue to shoot my 500 weekly rounds of 22 long and LR, or buy one box of '06.
All my friends shot mil-surp, but mil-surp 30-06 was not available, and you couldn't hunt with it, so with that, and my innate curiosity, I bought a press, dies, a scale, powder, primers, bullets and a bullet mold, all mail order from Herter's, shipped to my door for the price of a few boxes of Winchester Super-X...oh yeah, a Lyman manual too.
I think I was the only person within 1000 miles that re-loaded, and my friends, relatives kept telling me to be careful not to blow myself up...but they always said things like that about my projects.
Well, my ammo shot better than the factory stuff...it was a little hotter, but lessons learned, I never bought but those 2 boxes of '06 factory ammo my entire life.
