The Good 'ol Days

[mrcabinet]

I ran across this rummaging through a box of my old hunting gear. I'd guess it's from the mid 80's, when I was shooting in an indoor league. The place I bought those at has been out of business for many years now. Man I feel old.......

[SI VIS PACEM PARRABELLUM]

I have some very old probably late 50's - early 60's Alcan shotgun primers. Cost 2.99 per 1000.

[Wobbly]

[M1A4ME]

My oldest reloading components are from the early 80's.  Quite a few full and partial boxes of rifle bullets in the attic I need to get down, some day.  Not much call for for the Sierra match bullets around here (100 yds. is it at the range and nothing over 200 yds. if I was still hunting).  If I was to start varmint hunting again I'd get all those 45, 52 and 55 grain soft points/hollow points for the .223 down and start using them.

I used up all the primers from the early 80's about 7 or 8 years ago and most of the powder.  Only have the IMR4350, W760 and a tiny bit of W748, some IMR3031, 4320 and 4064 (all the .308/M1A trial/test stuff that either didn't produce the accuracy I wanted or was damaging to the gas system.)

I do have a couple boxes of WW2 era steel cased .45 acp ammo.  That's the oldest ammo I've got.  The HXP .30-06 is a combination of late 60s and early 70's boxes/cans/crates.  All good stuff.  Ran across a bunch the other day I didn't even remember having.  Christmas presents for the sons and nephew this year, to go with the M1 Garands I gave them last year.  I am telling them to be sure to bring me the brass, to reload.

I still say, while being more costly in the long run, that being disorganized quite often results in very pleasant surprises for me.

[mrcabinet]

I have a few boxes of WW2 .30-06 armored piercing and (I think) tracers in a crate somewhere. I'll never shoot them, but it will be fun when I run across them. If you don't mind, M1A4ME, I'd like to borrow your line about being disorganized - I know exactly what you mean.

[SI VIS PACEM PARRABELLUM]

I have a few boxes of WW2 .30-06 armored piercing and (I think) tracers in a crate somewhere. I'll never shoot them, but it will be fun when I run across them. If you don't mind, M1A4ME, I'd like to borrow your line about being disorganized - I know exactly what you mean.

Yep I have several surplus bandoliers of that 30.06 black tip ammo loaded in Garand clips. Too bad I don't have a Garand too shoot them from.

[M1A4ME]

An old friend of my dad's, a WW2 Marine Pacific island campaign veteran, gave me a clip of tracers about 35 years ago.  I put the in the gun safe.  I had M1917/03/03A3 and 03A4 rifles but didn't feel the need to shoot the tracers.

One night I heard a BOOM, BOOM, BOOM over and over out back of the house and headed out back to see what was going on.  My father-in-law was standing there with his Remington 742 firing my tracers out across the ridge behind the house.  I asked what he was doing and he said, "I just love to watch those things fly up into the sky."  That was the end of my tracers.

[Wobbly]

An old friend of my dad's, a WW2 Marine Pacific island campaign veteran, gave me a clip of tracers about 35 years ago.

Funny aside....

When I was on the rifle team in HS, we'd all go to the Army/Navy store, buy surplus ammo for our dad's war guns and head out to the woods. Well, this one guy had a Brit 303 and the only ammo the store had that day was tracer.

Well we shot the 30-06, then the Jap 7.7, but when it got to the 303, one of the first rounds started a brush fire.... at the top of a hill. There was water available, but only at the bottom of the hill... of course. So we took the moon style hub caps off the car and 4 of us spent the rest of the afternoon running up and down that hill.

That completely expended my interest in tracers !

[SoCal]

$5.49 for a box of wadcutters!  The last time I saw wadcutters for sale they were $29.95!!

[mrcabinet]

And that $5.49 was at the "high end" sporting goods store in town!

[Wobbly]

And that $5.49 was at the "high end" sporting goods store in town!

Yeah, the big discount store in town, K-Mart, probably had them for $4.99 !