Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Is a dead deer worth .45 cents???

That's $13.50. I spent more than that for the toilet paper, potato chips, and cookies I took to my deer camp last week.

The cost of premium bullets are miniscule compared to what I spend on deer hunting every year, so to me it's a no brainer to use the premiums. I just don't shoot my big game rifles enough for an extra $50 a year to matter. If I had 4 boys hunting and was on a very limited income then I might feel differently. For me I've got a limited amount of time to hunt and want to make the most of it. I have had some not so desirable results out of standard factory bullets. Years ago I bought a new 7mm rem mag and wasn't set up to handload it, so I bought a couple of boxes of winchester 150 gr. power points, sighted it in and went hunting. The first three deer I shot with it all ran into the most ungodly thick cutovers you could imagine. I specifically remember being on my hands and knees in the rain and mud, pulling briars off of me, with a flashlight in my mouth blood trailing a deer through this cutover. That was not pleasant. Those 150 gr. power points were way too tough for out little southern whitetails and wouldn't expand, winchester must have figured that they were going to be shot at elk and built them pretty stout. After the first three ran several hundred yards each I threw the remaining factory ammo in the cupboard and bought some reloading dies. My trailing adventures ceased when I started shooting some decent bullets at them.