Thread: How many rounds do you generally take when you go hunting?

During some time in cadets we learnt about it but that was the first time. From memory we went over it on the firearm saftey course.

I got a 308.
So 1.

Depends

223 mag plus 1 then a strip of ten, more if on a cull
308 mag plus same again

Depends. 308 generally 20 rounds. If culling, carry a bit more. If using 223, my pouch will have about 50 rounds. If culling, carry up to 100 rounds if large numbers of animals present.

8-10 if after deer or pig....wallabies no less than 30. Ducks,well opening day hundy rounds, last opening day could have taken four and brought some home lol.

For general hunting. Whatever the mag capacity is of my rifle, plus a spare mags worth.

Currently with my Kimber, that's be 5 in the mag and 5 spare.

With my CZ 3 in the mag, 3 spare

5 rounds deer hunting

Originally Posted by stagstalker

It's easy to have a big stuff up and suddenly be out of ammo. I've been on hunts where 5 wasn't enough for the day after a big stuff up and it was on to the knife. Day hunt for me is now generally about 10.

I've had similar on multi day hunts where one good stuff up led to me wishing I brought more ammo. Depends on the trips purpose but maybe 15 - 20 for multi day.

It really depends on what your plans are.

Modern tech is pretty good for emergencies these days but it's always handy to have enough ammo on hand to fire the distress signal of three evenly spaced shots.. plus a repeat or two. Although I wonder how many people would register what that means these days.

Three 5 seconds apart repeated after 10 minutes is what I remember. It should still be mentioned today I reckon.

I remember reading how Barry Crump began:
" I went running off with enough ammo rattling around my haversack to start a small war."
I've kept this in mind, and tried not to go overboard. That said, I usually carry 20 or so. The other thing ammo is useful for apart from the obvious, is as in the post above, signaling that you're in distress, if you time the shots correctly.

4 in the mag for me, unless we're having a bomb up on goats or shooting rabbits etc.

7 for me on a typical 2-3 day trip, cos that's what my stock pouch holds.

I used to only take 4-5 on the theory that if I use them all I'm doing something wrong, but after a couple of experiences similar to @stagstalker's I started carrying a couple more. Haven't used all 7 yet, but if I'm down to my last round I'd be hesitant to take a shot at an animal in case I wounded it and was unable to quickly finish it off.

I always carry a PLB so I'm not sure I'd ever need to employ the 3 x evenly-spaced shots - I wouldn't know if anyone had heard them, and if they had, whether they would then be able to find me. If it came to that I'd probably be hitting the button.

The 7 are usually 3 x soft point + 4 x ballistic tip, because the BTs don't fit in my mag and I have to single-feed them for longer range shots. The soft points are for spook'n'shoot or backup shots.

If I was hunting somewhere with high numbers of pigs or goats that I'd shoot to waste for conservation purposes then I'd probably take more, but I'm usually hunting in deer country with a fair old hike in/out, so 2 smaller animals would be my max.

5-6 rounds for me. I'm only going to carry 1 deer out max.

Originally Posted by Ned

5-6 rounds for me. I'm only going to carry 1 deer out max.

Same here.

Worth mentioning here - remove suppressor before your 3 "help me" shots!
Our group have this as part of our "someone has gone missing but not quite ready to call in the cavalry" plan.
Fired on the hour if overdue.

And where are you firing these shots? Into the ground I hope