Re: best bulk ammo for my apocalypse cache
This here is a good reason to reload. Looking at .45ACP alone I decided to just do a quick numbers crunch on Midway's web site. Like some have mentioned (with humor), if you are gonna stock ammo for the fore mentioned scenario, it may as well be good defensive stuff and not target practice rounds. Picking an arbitrary number of 500 rounds of .45 ACP, just to use as a baseline, and then choosing a decent defensive load offered by a manufacturer, I picked the Hornady 230gr XTP +p JHP.
If I wanted to load 500 rounds of this, the cost of components alone would run me about $350. Thats using standard pricing from Midway. Shopping around or diffrent preferences will lead to diffrent pricing. That specific load, ordered at a quantity of 500 will cost $475, again using Midway's prices. So right off the bat I can save $125 by loading my own. Buying components locally can save me on shipping and hazmat fees. The two biggest things that turn people off to reloading is the cost of equipment, and the time involved. A standard starter kit will run you about $200-300, and figure $35 for a set of dies. But if you consider the first 1k rounds of loaded pistol ammo alone, you have either paid for, or nearly paid for the equipment. Spend another $40 for a set of .223 dies and now you can load both. I have a standard single stage press and it can take me maybe 2 hours to load 100 rounds of 30-06 ammo to the same (or better) specs as most match grade brands. Figure on that same setup, 500 pistol rounds would take about 4 hours. I have seen guys with progressive presses crank out 100 rounds in 20 minutes.
To me I would rather have 200 rounds of hand loaded ammo that I am confident with, as opposed to 1000k spam can rounds of god-knows-what. I have shot enough bulk ammo to know that you really dont know what you got. So if it is something I may need to depend on, either spend pretty coin on new, premium ammo, that I would be confident with, or invest the time and money and aquire a new skill set. But, then again, it may not be great, or even reliable, but seeing 1k rounds of shiny bullets sitting in an ammo box is enough to make some folks feel warm, fuzzy and secure.