Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How many mags do you need and why?

It is always nice to have extras.

Those are both eight round magazines. I figure if I get into a bad situation, if I can't shoot my way out of it with 17 rounds of .45 ACP Fed. Hydra Shok cartridges, I'd better adhere to that old adage, "Feets, don't fail me now."

L.E.

You know them MTM ammo crates?
You can hold a lot of thirty rounders in one of them.

I need a few more.

That’s when you need a grenade to toss over your shoulder on your way out.

DF

I have several 1911s from a Norinco to a Wilson Combat and a few inbetween, so I have plenty of spares I still buy older 1911 mags if I see them and just change the springs.

I have three each for my 1911,s Except the Colt with a 22 slide. I have not acquired additional Colt 22 mags yet.
Two for the Ruger Mk IV.
Four AICS 308 mags to share between two Rem 700s in 260.

Now Dad, Always hunted with a 760 in 30-06. He carried one mag in the rifle, one in each front pants pocket, and one in each breast pocket of his flannel.. For a total of twenty rounds.

A bunch.

It’s like Christmas all the time, find mags all the time I don’t even remember, found 6 other day still in packaging.

Same here, Barry.

And need more.

Found a box full of 1911 mags a little while back.

1. "How many mags do you need?"
Yes

2. "and why?"
Rhetorical

I want as many magazines as I feel like I might need. When it's time to fight, you sure as he'll don't want to be loading magazines.

Kinda how I see it: if I have to reload, I'm in more trouble than one man with a pistol needs to be in.

By then you should have fought your way back to your car to get your long gun and finish the fight.

I got that concept from my SWAT sniper LEO bud.

DF

For my bolt action hunting rifles, just one, they are pricey at $117 per. https://www.midwayusa.com/product/102437975?pid=912178, if I lost one hunting I could always single load, but lately I've been using a cheap plastic mag in my pack for fast reload (if I ever need it I've messed up)!

For my Glocks, it 15 won't do it, more isn't likely to help at that point.

Magazines are a consumable, and history tells us they can be legislated out of availability. So no less than 10 per rifle/pistol, and well over 100 AR magazines and 9mm Glock magazines of various sizes.

It's all up to what you think you need. I bought my first handgun (G17 Gen2) in 1994 right before the ban, and lived through ten years of BS. I'm not getting caught like that again.

Our combat load to go to Iraq was 7, 30 round magazines for 210 rounds. I don't like the 30 round magazines. I like the 20's. A close equivalent would be 11 twenty round magazines. That's about how many I have in 20 round magazines. Keep in mind, stuffing 20 rounds in the magazines makes the top round difficult to strip out so I drop one round in each magazine to 19 for dependability. (I know for all you nay sayers) I need that 11th magazine. I have some 30 round magazines but I leave 2 out for dependability. A lesson I learned loading 30 round magazines while I was in Afghanistan.

kwg

This 👆nor will I say on the internet.

I think along the same lines for the same reasons. Magazines are a wear item. If you carry and use them a lot and practice reloading at speed, you will drop them and they will get beat up and exposed to mud, dirt, gravel, snow, water and concrete, necessitating periodic replacement. If you keep some loaded in different places like vehicles or day packs, you need extras. If you don’t like to strip out carry ammo from magazines to train with them, you need extras for that. After the federal 10 round mag limit sunset in 2004, for every new carry gun I bought that had more than a 10 round magazine capacity, I settled on 12 magazines as a reasonable minimum. For new model guns with scarce availability of spare mags, I try to have at least 3 total until I can gradually get more depending on my intended use scenario.

For guns that don’t get carried or shot a lot, a few can be good enough.