My numbers currently look like this.
Match grade 223/5.56 for prairie dogs: I'm running 53gr vmax, and with current powder and primer costs, I'm spending about $0.43/rnd. I can by factory ammo at that cost. I can even buy pretty good factory ammo at that cost if I shop around, but I can't buy ammo that will shoot 1/2 moa period. If I want that level of accuracy, I have to load it myself.
Looking at your 7-08 and assuming you're running a 140gr NBT and using around 43gr of powder at $40 per pound, your cost would be about $0.92/rnd.
There are a hand full of things you gain from reloading. Is it cheaper? Yes, but only when you compare apples to apples. In other words, if you're fine with shooting cheap ammo (especially NATO cartridges), the cost advantage is significantly reduced. However, if you're shooting premium ammo, the cost difference is usually more significant. Its just rare for someone to shoot a high volume of premium ammo. Those individuals are normally competitors or they are into shooting large quantities of varmints.
The 2nd thing you get is accuracy (quality). Sometimes there's relatively inexpensive ammo that shoots really well (MOA or a little better), but that's rare. 223 is about the only thing I've ever seen this happen on, and even then MOA is not all that impressive in my book. With most rifle cartridges, I've been able to get most decent rifles to shoot around 1/2 moa. With a known good rifle, I can get noticeably better.
The 3rd thing you get is availability, but this requires planning on your part and takes time (years) to really pay off. I bought 40k primers in 2017 at around $26 per thousand. 2 years ago I bought multiple 8 lb kegs of my favorite powders, most for under $30 per pound. That means my actually cost for reloading today is pretty cheap compared to factory ammo. Even considering today's prices, if you make sure to always have an unopened pound of powder (preferably a keg), and a few unopened trays of primers (preferably 1k minimum), and an unopened box of bullets, you'll always have enough to go do something with regardless of what it is you want to do. Basically, keep at least a 2 year supply of components on your shelf, and that will be enough to make it through "temporary" disruptions in the supply chain.
The final thing you get is the ability to decide exactly what you want to shoot out of your rifle. For instance, if you prefer the way a 140gr Partition performs on game out of your 7-08, you are not limited to the handful of factory cartridges that load that bullet. You are free to try different powders and charge weights until you find a combination that gives you the accuracy and trajectory that you're satisfied with. - Case in point, MY 7-08 is a 16" Encore pistol. Most powders I tried out of it would shoot okay, but my velocities were all really slow due to the short barrel. Most of the powders I tried did not perform well out of that gun near the top end of the charge weights. However, N140 shot EXTREMELY well, and gave me about a 50 fps bump in speed. After trying that, I also tried N540 and N550 and found that N550 gave me good accuracy with a 150-200 fps bump in speed over powders like Varget, 4350, and BLC-2. IMHO, this is the biggest reason to reload your own ammunition, even if you're shooting handguns. The ability to change/adjust your loads to match your application is worth its weight in gold. I can go train with cheap 9/40/45 lead reloads that are just barely strong enough to cycle the gun at a fraction of what factory ammo costs, and with a fraction of the recoil.
The other thing to consider is that right now you can buy ammo at roughly the same price you could last year, and the year before. It's gone up, but not at the rate powder has. That will likely change in the very near future. So while cheap and relatively accurate 223 varmint loads may have cost the same last spring as good reloads cost now, by next spring that situation will have corrected itself.
jd
