How often do you change out your JHP rounds in your daily carry?

Couple of points; I have some .45 ACP ammo (live) dated FA17. Had enough loose ammo for one full magazine. Didn't want to open up the two somewhat sealed boxes. All seven rounds went bang. That's 99 year old ammo people and I have absolutely no clue how it may have been stored all those years. I have a friend who inherited a choice 1911 with a serial number that places it in 1911 or possibly 1912. He got it from his father in law and he decided to shoot off the ammo in the magazine. Cases were dated FA14. No misfires and no jams. The sad news is he didn't know about corrosive priming and a once mint early 1911 is now junk. :( I cleaned it up the best I could but it's ugly now.
Dunno if it's germane to the thread but in 1980 or 81, I got a smoking deal one 1,000 rounds of once fired .357 Magnum brass. I got it all frisked, necks properly belled and all rounds primed. For some reason I never got that ammo loaded. It's been sitting out in an uninsulated shed all these years in Tucson's very hot summers, humid and hot rainy season and several for sure hard freeze winters. A while back I loaded up 100 rounds, 50 for a friend and 50 for me. Every one fired as it should.
My carry gun most of the time is an S&W M60 .38 Spl. snubby. There are times when it's had to stay in the console of my vehicle during some very hot days. My truck is a dark blue and it gets might hot inside. I'm gonna have to hit the range and see if they will still shoot.
Paul B.
 
When I picked up my LCP earlier in the year, I finally fired off the last of the Winchester Ranger SXTs that I bought and had been carrying (primarily 'car carry') since 1998.

My P95 (9mm) still sometimes gets stuffed with Hydrashoks purchased in 2000 and used as the primary SD load until 2014.

If I'm not seeing any problems with the load, I generally don't care to mess with it.


In the case of those Winchester SXT loads, I did occasionally fire a couple (besides initial testing) over the preceding 18 years. ...But it wasn't to rotate them due to age. It was because I was seeing a little bullet setback or 'crimp jump', from being chambered repeatedly.
I'd fire off the 'offenders' and mix a couple 'new' cartridges from the box into the magazine.



Revolvers?...
I don't rotate, unless I'm just changing loads or managed to fire off the loaded SD ammo for some reason. There's some .44 ammo from 1997 in my Super Blackhawk right now, and it's likely to go right back in the box when I change the load for whatever reason.
 
I try to rotate my carry ammunition out, but I do not have an exact system. I just change it out when it seems like its been a long time since I last did so.
 
If you practice with your carry gun (which everyone should) then just shoot it next time you bring it to the range. If you don't want to shoot the whole mag then just shoot the chambered round and rack in a new one. If it's just sitting in the gun then it'll be fine for awhile. Do people think ammo expires like a carton of eggs if they sit too long?

I bring up a story when it comes to loaded mags and ammo. I read an article awhile back of these gun writers being called to the house of a WWII widow who's husband had just passed away. She wanted them to take the bring back 1911 he had stored up in the attic. Not only was it sitting in an attic, but it had a loaded mag with WWII ammo in it. They said it was loaded since he came back from the war. They took the mag out and put it in a new 1911 and not only did every round feed,fire and eject, but it locked back the slide after the last round.
 
Now that I'm retired I really don't have a schedule. My main concerns with duty/carry ammo is not that it won't go bang, but rather with things like bullet push back, rims getting dinged up,etc. Not much of an issue back during the days when the revolver reigned supreme, but more of an issue in today's semi-auto world. During almost 40 years in LE though, duty ammo was replaced once a year. FWIW, a few years ago I had the opportunity to chronograph some old factory Winchester .357 Magnum 125 grain duty ammo that had been stored in less than ideal conditions. It had been stored in a shed exposed to Summer temperatures of 100+ degrees for something I suspect was 20 years or more. I tested ammo from 4 different boxes. It all went bang, but velocities tended to be erratic.........
 
Why are you asking specifically about replacing hollow points?

I am not aware they go bad any sooner than anything else.

I personally carry handloaded lead full wadcutters or semi-wadcutters, and have never had any of my carry ammo fail to go off, even when several years old.

I shoot quite a bit however, and the ammo in my carry guns is usually fired within a couple of months or less.
 
I bought a box of Win Silvertips shortly after I got my 1911. They were always loaded\carried be it on my person or in a vehicle.

A year or two ago I burned thru my remaining 3 mags of 40 yr old Silvertips in the belief they were too old and unreliable.
Each one went BANG and I realized I wasted a bunch of $$$ :mad:
 
Duty ammo get swapped out during Annual Quals. Have qualify with any other carry weapons too, so those rigs get emptied during quals too.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
I don't have a set schedule for it, but probably average about once a month or so. I try to shoot a box of my carry ammo at least that often. POI and felt recoil seem to differ compared to the generic round ball practice ammo.
 
I don't think you are wrong to change out your ammo, but its not something I bother worrying about.
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^^^This^^^

I too have measured rounds for setback and have never seen it in one carry piece. The jacket on all rounds of carry ammo are tarnished pretty good, and this ammo is at least 8 years old. I bought 3 boxes of 50 rounds in '08 or so. I fired two boxes to establish reliability in two different pistols (I know, I know, I really should fire more rounds per pistol... but never had a failure so I'm good with it). The other box has been loaded in both pistols for years now. I frequently fire one of them, so rounds do get chambered frequently. I've measured for setback and never noticed any. The first year I fired all of the ammo that I carried in my Kahr, which was my EDC, and never had a failure. I cycled new rounds into it and planned to make it a yearly affair. After that I began shooting surplus ammo in other firearms and realized that if 50+ year old ammo is good to go, my 3 year old carry ammo was probably okay. I haven't fired any of it since other than test firing one magazine a couple of years ago. No problems. Probably time to test fire another mag in another year or so.

Ammo in my duty carry, however, is cycled yearly when I qualify. I would still trust it if it wasn't, but that's how my agency qualifies. I don't carry that Kahr so much anymore now that I have an issued P290... but none-the-less it does still get carried at times and I do trust the ammo in it.
 
When ever I go to the range, and when it comes time to practice with my carry gun and I forget to change over to fmj range ammo!:eek:
Or once a month like my underwear.:eek::eek:
 
When ever I go to the range, and when it comes time to practice with my carry gun and I forget to change over to fmj range ammo!
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That's about it for me. I'll forget to switch to range ammo with my CCW occasionally. Or I will shoot up all the range ammo I have and don't want to stop, so my spare mag gets shot.
 
As a full time LEO and firearms instructor, this is a shameful story to tell, but..................

When you're teaching others, you sometimes forget to take time for yourself.

I have some mags loaded with duty rounds, and some with practice rounds. When teaching, I change mags out to practice rounds so I'm not burning $2 every time I pull the trigger to show someone something.

During one of those times, I used my practice stuff and had one of the other instructors there run me through my qualification. Then later, the duty stuff got put back in. A few times of that got me some 3 year old duty ammo in my daily carry that I sweat all over, get rain down in, dust up in, blah, blah, blah.............

Guess what?? It all functioned flawlessly............... Nothing to talk about in this thread. I would have complete faith in my duty ammo if I only changed it once every 5 years...........
 
I had some old Corbon (I think DPX) rounds fail the other day. They had sat around awhile and had been my carry ammo at one point.

Had 2 failures out of 6. Not overly impressive. I had switched out to Federal HST as carry ammo before this though.

I did recycle both of those (I could see the hammer strike on the primer) and they fired fine on the second round. Fired 50 rounds of Federal after that with no failures.
 
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