searcher
Gold $$ Contributor
I got a smile when reading this post - as I set out a number of years back to find the cheapest (and still very effective) load for ground squirrels. While it is nice to have a load that is all dialed in with the best of everything - that just wasn't necessary except on the long shots. Anyone who goes sage rat blasting know of what I speak. Makes little sense to be shooting even "high-end" mass-produced bullets like Sierra Blitz Kings when you can whack them with anything at 200 yards. So I started out with Lake City 1x fired military brass. Was $309.00 for 4,800 pieces of brass. I used Tula primers which were $75.00 per 5,000 and Nosler cup and core overruns sold by Shooters Pro Shop. Powder had to be cheap too. And that meant buying powder I had never tried before. I bought both Varmint Power and Military surplus powder - both cheaper than any other powder I could find at the time. I had hoped to get sub-3/4"MOA loads - as I didn't expect much from any cup and core bullet with a rough-looking exposed lead tip. Wow - was I wrong. Sub1/2" no problem. So that ammo cost me about $25.00/100 rounds. At that time - loading up the same number of rounds using, for example, factory brass, any other brand of primers, Blitz King bullets, etc. as I used in my other loads - the cost difference between 100 rounds was about $47.00. And every squirrel within reasonable range was just as dead - just about as often. Within a few hundred yards - it made no difference at all. That stuff seemed too cheap at the time I bought it - and, luckily, I was right.
