I was always conscious of picking affordable cartridges for my hunting and shooting purpose. Being able to find ammo widely available and reasonably price was at the forefront of my mind when purchasing firearms.
It didn't make sense to me to buy some nifty firearm in cartridge/caliber that I couldn't afford to shoot and practice with. Thus my choice of 223rem and 308win rifles.
However, the cartridge that push me into finally into reloading my own ammo was the 44mag. It's a great cartridge but there'd be no way I could practice with it to become profecient with this handgun. It was simply too expensive.
So, I owe my jump into handload/reloading due to the 44mag.
I'm curious to hear what got you into reloading?
What got me into reloading?
5 or 6 old men that use to hang around East Park Hardware in Memphis TN. There was a table/social club in the back of that store in the early 1980's and these guy's hung out there all day drinking the owners coffee, talking guns and hunting. The owners were a pretty smart old couple. They served up coffee and old hunting/shooting magazines for free and in return had some of the most knowledgeable salesman to ever work in a gunstore and they did it for free.
I went in one day complaining about the groups I was getting out of a M70 7Mag. After a sit down with the counsel of resident experts I was sent out the door with a some sort of 2 part epoxy for bedding, a set of dies, Speer reloading manual, Lee Anniversary Kit, bullets, powder and primers.
I was told to read the "how to" section in the manual twice and come back and tell one of them exactly what I was going to do before I did it. They were all eager to pass on the knowledge they had and I was grateful for it.
After that my groups went from about 2 inches to some as small as a dime after a lot of experimentation. Back then I only had one centerfire rifle and life was a little simpler.
Now the store is gone and sadly all the old guy's that hung around it. I'm grateful to them and have taught several others to reload since then.
