{"id":5247,"date":"2018-12-10T19:53:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T00:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=5247"},"modified":"2018-12-10T19:53:29","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T00:53:29","slug":"christmas-ammo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/christmas-ammo\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRISTMAS AMMO"},"content":{"rendered":"

For shooters you want to remember on Christmas, no matter what your budget, consider ammunition.\u00a0 Your gift budget simply determines the volume.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Big box stores sell shotgun shells in birdshot loads for less than a sawbuck for a box of 25. Deer rifle ammo will run $16 to $25 for a box of twenty standard soft-nose rounds, more for high-tech premium.\u00a0 A box of 20 rounds of defensive carry ammo for handguns will go for $20 to $30 at your gun shop, and that includes some of the best high-tech stuff.\u00a0 .22 Long Rifle, of course, is even cheaper.<\/p>\n

A few caveats on that, though.\u00a0 First, make sure the ammo is right for the gun.\u00a0 3\u201d Magnum 12 gauge shells won\u2019t be right for a 12 gauge shotgun with the standard 2 \u00be\u201d chambering.\u00a0 .45 Auto ammo won\u2019t work in a revolver chambered for .45 Colt.\u00a0 Gun dealers can tell you stories about customers who bought the wrong ammo for someone else, or even themselves.<\/p>\n

Have a chat with the giftee about their favorite ammo.\u00a0 A hunter who goes after ducks exclusively will need steel or bismuth shot, not lead.\u00a0 A lot of defense-minded gun owners are very type-specific and even brand-specific about what they\u2019ll put in their carry or bedside gun. My dad was a smoker, and a carton of unfiltered Camels was always among the things I got him for Christmas; if I had given him a carton of Lucky Strikes instead, he might have disowned me. Some shooters are like that with their ammo brands.\u00a0 Just as the bourbon connoisseur who insists on Knob Creek won\u2019t be drinking even a gift bottle of Bubba\u2019s Generic, the serious shooter who loads his 9mm with 147 grain Federal HST or 124 grain +P Speer Gold Dot wants only <\/em>that, and not a substitute. \u00a0If you give your deer-hunting cousin a box of 150-grain .30\/30 ammo, it probably won\u2019t hit to the exact same point of aim\/point of impact coordinates as the 170-grain loads he sighted his rifle in for, and it could be the difference between a hit and a miss, a cleanly bagged or horribly crippled animal next hunting season.<\/p>\n

There may be some folks on your gift list who need good ammo more than others. Those will tend to be the casual as opposed to \u201centhusiast\u201d gun owners.\u00a0 Your neighbor who shoots a deer every year but hasn\u2019t bought a box of ammo in two or three years will probably be loading with ammo that got chewed up running it through his Winchester \u201994 every time he loaded and unloaded it, and that can deform the rounds sufficiently to impair accuracy.\u00a0 The guy who unloads his carry pistol every night and then reloads it and rechambers the same round the next morning has almost certainly compromised the cartridge that has been in and out of the chamber more than a couple of times.\u00a0 Some folks need to think about that more, and the person who gives them good, fresh ammo may literally save their life, depending how the future goes.<\/p>\n

My most memorable Christmas in terms of gifts was probably my twelfth.\u00a0 My dad gave me a Colt 1911 .45 pistol, military surplus, that turned out to have been manufactured in 1918. I still have it, and shot it this year to commemorate its centennial.\u00a0 But you know, that same year my sister gave me a shoulder holster to go with it, and one uncle gave me a box of Winchester .45 ACP ammo for it, all together under the tree.\u00a0 And I remember Elizabeth\u2019s gift and Uncle Whitney\u2019s just as much as my dad\u2019s, more than half a century later.<\/p>\n

Just sayin\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For shooters you want to remember on Christmas, no matter what your budget, consider ammunition.\u00a0 Your gift budget simply determines the volume. Big box stores sell shotgun shells in birdshot loads for less than a sawbuck for a box of 25. Deer rifle ammo will run $16 to $25 for a box of twenty standard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5248,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions\/5248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}