Reloading ammunition offers benefits for all shooters.

Whether you are a serious target shooter or not, chances are pretty good that if you're a hunter who uses a gun, you enjoy shooting. Loading ammunition yourself can be a great way to stretch your paycheck further while offering you the ability to fine-tune loads for better accuracy in your gun. It's also a very interesting pastime that can make the off-season months pass a bit more agreeably, and will probably make you a better shooter as well.

Let's take a look at some of the benefits of handloading, or reloading, ammunition. Number one in many cases is the reduced cost of loading ammo rather than buying factory-loaded cartridges. I recently figured up the per-cartridge cost of loading ammo for my 222 Remington, and even at the very high prices charged by my local source of loading components (I've since found I can mail-order everything but powder and primers at a much lower cost), I discovered that handloading cut my ammo cost in half vs. buying factory ammo at Wal-Mart.

Another benefit of handloading is that you can "fine-tune" your loads to suit yourself, your hunting, and your gun. Most rifles will attain greater accuracy with some loads than with others, and a certain amount of experimentation is usually required to find a good, accurate load. Considering the prices of hunting ammunition today (depending on caliber and load, ranging roughly from $10 to $40 per box of twenty), trying out several different factory loads in your rifle can get mighty costly.

With the right equipment, you can load just a few rounds of several given powder/bullet combos, then head for the range and see which ones work best. Different hunting conditions and/or game likewise call for different loads, and handloading allows you to easily tailor your loads to your gun and/or the game you'll be hunting... and just think how proud you'll be when you take an animal with ammunition of your own manufacture.

Ready to learn some more about reloading?