How Much Ammo do you anticipate shooting in the REST of your lifetime ?

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444

New member
The title of the thread says it all: How much ammo, do you anticipate shooting in the REST of your lifetime. In other words, if you were going to put together a stockpile of ammo, or reloading components to last the rest of your lifetime, what number do you arrive at ?

This is NOT one of these "if I hit the lottery" questions. Or, if I rubbed an Aladdin's Lamp and got three wishes questions. Think about how much you shoot now. How often you shoot. If you are not yet retired, maybe increase those numbers to take into account that you will have more time on your hands, kids will be gone......... Guess at what age you might not be able to shoot anymore............

I had this discussion with a friend several years ago. We both took it seriously and didn't try to be funny (even though the converstation occured in a bar). We both were actually trying to decide if we had enough ammo to enjoy shooting the rest of our lives or if we needed to keep buying. We even got into the fact that as we advanced in age, we probably couldn't continue doing the type of shooting we did at that time. For example my buddy intended to get into .22 benchrest shooting at some point as he became older since it didn't have many physical limitations.

FWIW: we both figured about 60,000 rounds after crunching the numbers. Not that it matters, but for whatever reason, I don't shoot anywhere near as much as I did then, so that number is probably quite high for me. At that time I was shooting at least three times a week and was shooting in several different matches a month. I could shoot all I wanted right near my house.........

I realize that right now it is hard to buy ANY ammo or reloading components. We all know that, so let's skip over that and just stick with the numbers and how you arrived at them.
 
I shoot about 400 rounds a month. 400x12=4800 rnds a year. lets say I shoot for 30 more years. 144,000 rnds.:D
 
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Usually about 10,000/year /or so for me. Sometimes more Plus the wife would make it 15 or 16k. On the low side figure 45 years.....


675,000 on the low side.:D:D



Ike
 
Well before the madness my wife and I would try to shoot about 1000 or so per month. That means 24000 a year times 70 years, so about 1.7 million rounds in our various calibers to last me comfortably through the rest of my life.
 
Wow, you are old enough to be married and think you will still be shooting 70 years from now.

Who knows ?
 
444 said:
Wow, you are old enough to be married and think you will still be shooting 70 years from now.

Who knows ?
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly! I'm 21 and figuring on 45 or so. I'll shoot till i go. But I ain't expecting to make it to 90.



Ike
 
Hey, he's thinking positive, you gotta like that.

If I do live till I'm 90, I am not so sure I would want to shoot. But, I hope I will.
 
If my wife and I were to continue shooting until we were about 70, I'd say we would likely need another 1.2 million rounds of ammo. She likes shooting just as much as I do, and I figure after we retire, we'll probably double what we shoot now until no longer capable of pulling the trigger.
 
Why wouldn't you count rimfire ?

It's ammo you are gonna shoot.



At one time I was probably shooting 2000 rounds of .22 a month. There have been many days I shot 500 .22 rounds in a day.

A shooting buddy of mine was dying of cancer and while he was still able, we went out and tried to shoot a 1000 round case of 8mm in one day. We both threw in the towel before we got half way through it.
 
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In an article about the Swiss K11 recently there was a photo of a 90-year old proudly shooting for score in their required military qualifications.
 
Well if rimfire is included IDK how many rounds.....one week last summer I shot about 5 or 6 thousand rounds. My neck hurt for a month.:mad:
 
It's the reloading in the OP that threw me off rimfire. I was thinking of stuff I reload. 90% of the stuff i shoot is personal reloads. Not counting rimfire.



Ike
 
i'm 74 years old. Got to be careful about buying too many ripe bananas.:D

i will continue to shoot 10-15 thousand rounds of centerfire ammo per year until i croak. Someone will inherit a big bunch of ammo.
 
Ike, I was just trying to include both factory ammo and handloads. I figured I would get replies to the effect: I won't buy any ammo because I reload. So, I was trying to cover all bases.
 
Not counting shotguns(don't really shoot them except when camping) or .22lr (I could burn through 500-1000 rounds of that a week), I used to shoot 500 rounds a month on average (quite a bit more weather permitting, not quite that much in the winter - didn't like paying range fees when I had a perfectly good backyard)

So,
500 rds/month X 12 months/year = 6000 rds/year

I'm only 22 now and hope to keep shooting for another 45-50 years, so:
6000 rds/year X 50 years = 300,000 rds

Now, when we factor in that I only have one pistol that fits into my above caliber restrictions, and I hope in the future to be able to buy many more guns in 5 other calibers we have:
300,000 rds/caliber X 6 calibers = 1,800,000 rounds

Of course, I will probably have neither the time nor money to be able to shoot 500 rds a month in all 6 calibers, so for fairness' sake, let's divide my total round count by half the number of calibers:
1,800,000 rds = 600,000 rds
3 calibers

So my final answer is 600,000 rounds. This total is not counting .22lr or shotguns as I previously mentioned.
Sadly, I just realized that I have put more thought into answering this one question than I have into three years of college.
 
I used to shoot 100 rounds per week; either 9mm, .45acp, .38 special,.44 special or .22 lr.
As of December, I have only gone shooting twice, and I'm waiting until I can get a box of .22 ammo. Until then.....
 
Here recently I haven't been shooting but around 100 .45 and .357 rounds a month, but at least once or twice a month I go to my buddies and go through at least 1 of those 100 round bulk packs of 12 gauge shells. Plus I just got an AK 47 and the ammo for those is cheap so I'll be shooting it a lot, so say 300-400 rounds a month maybe, so 600 or 700 rounds a month, depending on how much spare money I have, plus right now I'm in college and only making a couple bucks over minimum wage, so give me, lets say 4 years to get out of college and get a good job and be able to afford to stockpile ammo and I'll be 25 so it'll make the math easier. So say around 7000 rounds a year until I have a good job, so say around 28000 rounds in 4 years, then I'll have a good job and can shoot more, say 10-15000 rounds a year. So if I keep shooting like that until I'm 70 that would be 450,000-675,000. So for me alone, I'll say 700,000 rounds, plus my 2 kids say from 11-18 for them, limiting them to 2000 rounds a year, thats 28,000 rounds. I'll leave my old lady out of this since I haven't got her to shoot yet and I'm running out of fingers to add this on.
 
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