In fact, one of the primary ways I knew I was marrying well (the second time) was when I was explaining this to my then-fiancée:

“See,” I said to her, “2/3 of the cost of a round of ammo is the brass case. I can use those over and over.”

Now I was expecting a comment along the lines of “So, your ammo only costs 1/3 as much.” But what I got was “So, you can spend the same amount of money and shoot three times as much.”

You don’t find girls with that kind of good sense behind every patch of brush; I can tell you that.

My first efforts at handloading were when I was about 14 or so. I used some of my winter trapline money to buy a .36 caliber Colt 1851 Navy replica, and after I’d messed about loading it with a flask and loose .380 round balls, a magazine article showed me a better way: Paper cartridges, with a pre-measured load of black powder in a paper tube, glued to that .380 ball. There was a catch; to ensure proper consumption of the paper, the article recommended using cigarette papers. So the next time the Old Man went to town, I rode along, and while he conducted other business on the main drag, I went into the drugstore. Now, this was a small town in eastern Iowa; the druggist knew me and my family. But when I went to the counter to pay for a packet of Zig Zag cigarette papers, he fixed me with a gimlet eye and asked what I wanted them for.

“Paper cartridges,” I told him. “For a black powder revolver.”

“Bull cookies,” he replied.

I went out, found the Old Man, and took him back to the drug store with me. “Yes,” he told the druggist, “he’s making paper cartridges for his black powder gun.”

The cartridges worked great. But that led to some other adventures that didn’t work out so well.

See Also: Sunday Gun Day XLVI - Coyotes

There Were These Two Guys.

Any small, mostly rural area has its share of oddballs. For example, there were these two guys who lived along the Mississippi over at New Albin. They were about five years older than I and had as an unfortunate hobby “noodling.” For those of you who don’t know the term, that involves submerging in muddy water, feeling along the underside of rock ledges and mud banks, and bringing in big catfish by hand. It’s not normally a dangerous exercise, but these guys were in the habit of noodling for snapping turtles. I don’t remember their full names, but everybody called them “Three-Finger Pete” and “Lefty.”

What I really remember about them, though, was their one foray into handloading.

What Happened Next:

One day word got around that Pete’s grandfather had died, leaving not much of anything behind but, as I heard through the grapevine, “a few old guns.” It wasn’t until I was loading my boat into the Mississippi at the Waukon Junction boat ramp that I was apprised of the full meaning of that. Just as I was tying my boat off to a tree on the bank to start loading my fishing gear, an ancient Studebaker pickup rattled into the parking area, and who should emerge but Three-Finger Pete and Lefty.

I saw Pete had a gun case. “What do you have there?” I asked.

Pete, grinning, uncased the gun. It was a pre-64 Safari Grade Winchester Model 70, and a glance at the barrel showed the chambering: .375 Holland & Holland Magnum.

See Also: Sunday Gun Day Vol. II Ep. XXVIII - That Time Colt Made a Lever Gun and Winchester Made Revolvers

“What do you think?” Pete asked.

“Where you gonna get ammo?” I was working at the Woolco down in Cedar Falls at that time, and the one lonely, dusty box of .375 H&H that had been lying on our shelf for a couple of years was priced at $40 in 1978.

“I made my own,” Pete said, producing two big brass-cased rounds and handing them over for my inspection. The case and primer looked ok, but the projectile was a bit off. Oh, it was lead, but it didn’t look like it belonged on the case. But Pete was forthcoming with details.

“I looked around, and ammo for this thing is a killer. So I had some empty cases and got my uncle to prime them. He had some lead slugs for an old .38-55 Winchester, and I figured, it’s all Winchester, so it should be good, right? Grandpa left behind three cans of gunpowder, and they were pretty old.”

“Which one did you use?”

“I just blended them together. They all looked pretty much alike, except some of them were flat grains and some were round grains. Filled the cases up about to where the brass starts to narrow down, then stuck the bullets in with a pair of pliers. Figured I’d try shooting it in the trees over there,” he finished, pointing at a raggedy grove of box elders.

Pete headed that way. Curious, Lefty and I – Lefty was showing some uncharacteristic caution - followed at a safe distance. Pete stopped about fifty steps from the trees, chambered a round, aimed, and let fly.

Later, brought back to consciousness by a bucket of brown Mississippi River water to the face, Pete regarded the still-smoking rifle with some trepidation. “Don’t suppose I’ll fire the other one. You want to try it?”

“Thanks, no,” I replied. “I like my eardrums the way they are.”

As far as I know, Pete never fired that rifle again. It’s probably a testament to the toughness of pre-64 Winchester engineering that the old gun wasn’t grenaded into a thousand pieces.

These Days:

I still load a lot of my own ammo for rifles and revolvers. My favorite rifle, a custom large-ring 98 Mauser in the .338 Winchester Magnum, is a trifle fussy about ammo. I have a carefully developed load it likes, with which I can group shots into a grapefruit at 200 yards. My hot .45 Colt loads will lengthwise a big Iowa farm-country whitetail and blow a big chunk out of the far side of a railroad tie. But I develop my handloads carefully, with an abundance of caution, starting well below max loads in my various reference books and making sure to stop well short of the danger zone. I value my extremities, after all, after all these years, I’ve grown rather attached to fingers and eyeballs and want to keep them.

Handloading is a great hobby and a great way to increase your shooting time by saving some money. I highly recommend it – but as I do, use discretion. Get a couple of good reference books with good loading data and follow them. You only get one standard issue of fingers, eyes, and eardrums, after all.