Cost savings for reloading 300 Weatherby

Go slow and buy quality reloading equipment, if you want quality reloads that are more accurate and more consistent then factory ammo, keep good records of every load that you try, good or bad. For quality equipment, go Redding, Forster, or RCBS, for press and dies.
 
I have been reloading for 20 years. I bet I have saved a bundle.
Mostly 308 & 270 but also 338.....man those are expensive to buy tailor made...

Lots of times i get brass for free, guys who shoot factory dont want it.
Since it's illegal to load for other people I dont do that....but a fella could offset some costs by splitting the equipment with a buddy.

if you get your powder at the right price it helps too....Varget for example is $40 lots of places but $32 where i buy it. Hornady bullets (which are my fav and have dumped a lot of deer on their butt) are $33 generally, but can be more depending on where you get them.

To comment on what has been said:
There is a lot of good advice here. The one thing I find (and lots of western & northern outfitters will say the same) is that guys buy "big rifles" and then they dont practice with them because 1) it hurts the shoulder & 2) it hurts the wallet. Then they go on a nice moose / bear / goat / whatever hunt and they couldn't hit a cow in the asx with a banjo and guess what, no trophy is coming home.
Reloading helps with both ends of it. You dont need balls out loads to hunt. In fact often about 10-15% under max load is most accurate. Which allows for cheaper practice, which makes for better hunts.
 
Thanks everyone for your valuable input. It sounds like I may need to get into reloading (especially since a box of weatherby 300 is approx $100 for 20 rounds) but I will need to wait for someone getting out of reloading/shooting and wanting to sell off their kit

WSS sells Weatherby ammo for $58.99/box. Cabelas has it for $39-$59 depending on bullet.

If $$ is an issue, a .300 Win Mag would have been a better investment at $29/box, and no game animal would have known the difference.
 
I have been reloading for 20 years. I bet I have saved a bundle.
Mostly 308 & 270 but also 338.....man those are expensive to buy tailor made...

Lots of times i get brass for free, guys who shoot factory dont want it.
Since it's illegal to load for other people I dont do that....but a fella could offset some costs by splitting the equipment with a buddy.

if you get your powder at the right price it helps too....Varget for example is $40 lots of places but $32 where i buy it. Hornady bullets (which are my fav and have dumped a lot of deer on their butt) are $33 generally, but can be more depending on where you get them.

To comment on what has been said:
There is a lot of good advice here. The one thing I find (and lots of western & northern outfitters will say the same) is that guys buy "big rifles" and then they dont practice with them because 1) it hurts the shoulder & 2) it hurts the wallet. Then they go on a nice moose / bear / goat / whatever hunt and they couldn't hit a cow in the asx with a banjo and guess what, no trophy is coming home.
Reloading helps with both ends of it. You dont need balls out loads to hunt. In fact often about 10-15% under max load is most accurate. Which allows for cheaper practice, which makes for better hunts.

Is it illegal to load for other people in ON? Might be unwise, but it shouldn't be illegal. - dan
 
Is it illegal to load for other people in ON? Might be unwise, but it shouldn't be illegal. - dan


Lord I hope there wouldn't be a law against that. If you were doing it as a business I would expect some regulations but to reload for freinds or aquantances ?

If I get to see and shoot the gun and am the first to shoot the reloads to develop a load I have no worries reloading for a person. If someone comes with some hot load that they want contrary to my suggestions then I won't reload for them.

This is an area for common sense no need for intrusive government BS here. Goodness knows we have enough of that.
 
Dan
It "shouldn't be" is correct. But it is.
Only Licensed commercial reloaders can sell/give/barter (whatever you want to call it) reloaded ammo to another person

Read the links in the CSSA page - click on their link - then click Legal info then read this...

When you are reloading you should be in an area dedicated to reloading, no fumes, matches, smoking, no lights that can cause an explosion. Only 2 kg can be out of the locked box and in the room with you. At the end of the session all the explosives must be returned to the locked box. And you cannot resell or give away these cartridges. If you intend to, you need a license and more restrictions must be met. If you do not follow this you will be liable to be charged with unsafe storage under the Criminal Code.




Bubba
 
Considerable savings can be had with some calibers, my .416 Rigby runs close to $200 a box but will load for about $40 with premium bullets.

Sometimes the saveing aren't so cut and dried though, and usually I feel like I'm loseing money to gain accuracy and the ability to use the premium hunting bullets I want. A reloading setup isn't free, and load development can use up a pile of money in a hurry. Even if you are already a handloader the purchase of a new rifle will frequently require that a few hundred dollars worth of dies, brass, a few different powders and several boxes of bullets that follow you home. Much of those powders and bullets are going to be gathering dust as part boxes and bottles. That starts makeing factory fodder look cheap. On the other hand getting a rifle to shoot factory ammo can easily involve buying a box of every premium ammo in the store. That can quickly use up the price of an average rifle. It might be cheaper to pick a single load and swap rifles until you find one that shoots it. :( Although I'm a long time handloader I've been playing around with 30-06s lately, looking for something that would make a long time handloader happy and be purchaseable overseas. Its been so long since I've bothered with factory ammo that part of my mind still believed that all ought six ammo cost 18 bucks a box. That ain't even close to true.

Since you are more or less happy with the factory ammo in your .300 Roy, why don't you click on Frontier's site above and see if he is still selling Weatherby brand .300 Weatherby ammo for $44 a box? You can't buy the empty brass at that price.
 
The link is redirected to a scammer site

The more expensive the ammo, the greater the savings. I have not seen the new numbers, but the old number was 60% on average. I have found that people tend to spend the same amount of money, but will shoot more.

If you just want to run some numbers there are calculators that break it down for you and then you can compare with the price of factory ammo. The calculators only take into account components, not equipment.

Here is one calculator ~ Reloading Cost Calculator

That link redirects to a "celebrity ### scandal" page, and AVG announced it immediately as a known scammer/backdoor trojan and put all the unannounced BS it tried to drop on my computer into quarantine... I suggest you edit out that link immiediately!! :mad:
 
after you have bought your equipment , your cost per round could be from 50 cents to 2.00 dollars per round depending on the bullet used ( many of the premuin bullets are around 1 dollar per bullet ).

on one hand , it isn't exactly cheap to start out .... but once you have the equipment you are no longer dependant on expensive factory loaded ammo .
^Yes I'm one of those guys you see digging through the brass discard bins at our outdoor range.
One of the nicer finds is the "on sale priced" 300 Weatherby Magnum empty brass.
Some nice non-reloading shooter put both full boxes of dry empties back into the original factory cases. The least exspensive 20 rounds go for $100 over the counter.
I chop/trim/ream (any belted H&H based magnum case) these for my 458x2inch American. And Weatherby brass is arguably the best quality brass out there.

Cheers!
 
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