Reloading/Cost of Ammo
Having been an avid reloader for many years there are two important points regarding reloading and costs that should not be underestimated.
Firstly, if you want to be able to shoot accurately, there is no substitute for practice and practice costs money especially some of the heavier calibres. Reloading costs about 30% of factory ammo in regular calibres and even less in the big stuff.
Secondly, there is no doubt that with properly controlled home loading greater accuracy can be obtained when the load is tuned to your rifle, but you need to feed enough through it to get it right speed, weight and bullet combination, ask any benchrest shooter.
Yes, you can get on perfectly well with factory ammo, but for the serious shooter hand loading is the answer, it gives a great deal of satifaction and the confidence to know you can put the bullet in the right place.
One thing I have not seen mentioned in this topic is the use chronographs I consider this to be invaluable if you want to get the very best from you loading with todays technology there are some very good bits of software to create, analyse and record your loadings and help create some very interesting loads, it is not all about max veleocity.
If anyone is interested in getting started give me a call, I am scaling down my hunting for personal reasons and retirement, so I will be getting rid of a lot of my reloading equiptment including presses dies and a as new chrono.
Good Hunting.