Where to get cheap 303 British Ammo?
- Thread starter patrickp200
- Start date
blasted_saber
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- A blue part of Ontario
Surplus has dried up.
Sorry
Sorry
you said cheap .303!There is no such thing. Actually, there is pretty much nothing in any major centerfire cartridge. The only answer to ammo costs is to reload, it will cut costs to around half what commercial runs. You can also make up light plinking loads using cast bullets for maybe 25-30% of commercial ammo. Other than that, plan to win the lottery.
Mark
Looks like reloading is your only option for cheap .303. I was fortunate and managed to pick up a large lot of factory winchester and remington hunting ammo for about .50 cents a round. That being said, I still have dies and reload the spent brass.
Yup. My grandfather has told me about loading barges in Nanaimo after WWII and going out to dump huge amounts of .303 ammo and rifles among other things into the ocean. He said it was a terrible thing but as boats returned from Europe full of supplies there was no storage
There is not alot of surplus ammo left out there. You may be able to find some old tracer ammo out there at a gun show but they run upwards of $3.00 each round. Your best bet is to start hand loading. I load 303 brit. If you can scavenge some brass it will run you about 50 cents per round(depending on what your gun likes). Mine likes 45gr BLC2, 150gr Hornady sp, CCI br2 and any old brass you can scavenge. I live in Manitoba so there is tons of old 303 brass just laying around.
M12shooter
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- East St. Paul, mb
I have a couple boxes of 48 I believe... surplus WWII 303 ammo. Some dated 1943 and the second lot dated 1951ish. I'd sell it off as I have not owned an Enfield since the mid 80's. I'm in Manitoba and that might as well be on the dark side of the moon...depending on where you are located that is.
Buying 8lb kegs of powder, loading cast bullets lubed and /w gas checks, buying primers by the 1000, it costs me about 10 bucks after taxes for 50 rounds of .303 british. This is using 40 grains of BL-C(2) powder, not a light plinking load. I decrease my costs even more by using 5744 (30 grains, $850/50) for full power loads, or 700x (12 grains, $6.50) for light plinkers that my kid shoots. Figuring with this, you save about 25 dollars per box of 20 over factory ammo.
Think a press, dies, tumbler and stuff costs too much to recoup? You can set yourself up with a used single stage press, tumbles, dies, powder measure, bullet mould, case prep stuff for $300 bucks. Your costs are thereby mitigated after shooting about 300 rounds of home rolled ammo. You can't count your time, because you don't get paid to sit on your butt watching TV. You reload in your SPARE time, you don't take the day off work to reload.
Think a press, dies, tumbler and stuff costs too much to recoup? You can set yourself up with a used single stage press, tumbles, dies, powder measure, bullet mould, case prep stuff for $300 bucks. Your costs are thereby mitigated after shooting about 300 rounds of home rolled ammo. You can't count your time, because you don't get paid to sit on your butt watching TV. You reload in your SPARE time, you don't take the day off work to reload.
I spent probably 3x that getting set up and broke even just on .44 Mag and 30-06 in the first year. It takes an up front investment, but the payout doesn't take long if you shoot any amount at all. The extra versatility and quality of the handloaded ammo is just icing on the cake.
Mark
bclinehand
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Clearwater B.C.
Join the Canadian Rangers 
lots of .303 available for another couple of years
lots of .303 available for another couple of years
Last year at the Dawson Creek gunshow a dealer had well over 1k of South African and FN .303 ball priced at $0.50 a round.
I guarantee there's millions of rounds of .303 surplus still in Canada. Milsurp rifle shooters are hoarders of the first degree. You just have to find it.
My father personally helped to push some of it into the drink along with 9mm as well. I still have a map showing the artifical reefs (ammo dumps) off Van. isle.
It was in the late fifty's after the Korean war had ended.
once you start rolling your own you will find that it is way more accurate than factory. And much more consistant. My old enfield was shooting 3 inch groups with the factory stuff. Down to sub 1 inch groups with hand rolled stuff. You just have to do some experementation with bullet/powder/primer combinations to find what your gun likes.
It will be interesting to see what happens when and if the Canadian Rangers get new rifles. It would seem most likely that the new weapons will be something other than .303, which would leave hundreds of thousands if not millions of rounds of .303 FMJ sitting on govt shelves. Three basic options would be to a) sell them on the open market, b) sell/give them to a friendly govt who still uses them (and there are still quite a few in Asia and Africa) or c) destroy them.
For now - roll yer own is the only cheap way.
For now - roll yer own is the only cheap way.
By current market standards for the calibre, at $20 for 20 rounds of commercial product, everywhere you look you are finding the cheap .303 British ammo, and some of us would like to know where you have been looking and finding.
