Comments during Ammo Inc.’s Nov. 9 earnings conference call indicate enthusiasts can expect cartridge prices to increase for the rest of the year and continue to do so through 2024. Officials from the firm base that prediction on demand for its Streak Visual Ammunition, Jagemann Munition Components, /stelTH/ Subsonic Ammunition and Ammo Incorporated Signature lines. Sell through on Gunbroker, which it also owns, supports that conclusion.
One caller asked if the recent increase in ammunition sales reflected a seasonal trend, rather than an unexpected market shift. Ammo Inc. CEO Jared Smith answered, “So we would expect anywhere between a 5- to 6-percent increase and a gentle trend coming from September into October. This was a pretty sharp trend in that 14.7 percent. And that’s really because these events happened in the second half of October, it was really sharp incline after the events in Israel and Hamas that we saw the uptick.”
Retail prices haven’t—so far—reached Covid-19’s painful level, although “…we’re seeing wholesale pricing increase slightly,” Smith said. “And we continue to see opportunistic buys out there that says that price continues to escalate. So, do we think it will—that this is a long-term hold? We think there is a strategic repricing that’s happening going into the 2024 year.”
He said the increase in demand, according to results on Gunbroker, includes firearms as well. As for cartridges most in demand, Smith said, “…the stuff that everybody’s running for is 5.56 NATO and .223 Rem., 7.62×39 mm, all your larger rifle calibers, anything related to military calibers, because of the news between Israel and Hamas.”
The company reported a decline in total revenue for the quarter, however, attributed to a decline in its ammunition segment. That loss, according to officials, was largely due to a new, high-volume brass press that preforms cartridge casings. It was idled due to mechanical issues and—coupled with OEM-quality replacement parts still scarce after Covid-19—only recently repaired, tested and expected to go back online soon.
Groups just over one inch at 50 yards were the norm with AA1680 powder.
Bill Noody of Northern Precision has been thinking big these days, caliber-wise. He’s had requests for 0.500″-sized bullets and Bill delivered. Using .50 BMG cases for the bullet jackets, he draws them out and works his magic, then adds a lead alloy. The large Ma Deuce cases work perfectly and with the skillful use of his series of Corbin dies, he completes the bullets. If bonded bullets are wanted, an extra step is added.
These bullets can be made to any weight from 350 to 600 grains with a large meplat nose profile. When loaded with bullets crimped in the cannelure, they cycle flawlessly through my Big Horn Armory Model 89.
Bill Noody is a one-man show and his work is flawless!
A Little History
The .500 S&W Magnum made its debut at the 2003 SHOT show. Cor-bon designed the cartridge in a partnership with S&W. The motive was twofold. First, the companies wanted a handgun and cartridge capable of taking the largest North American big-game species. The second? Simply having bragging rights for the most powerful production handgun and load produced.
If you’re gonna’ do it, do it big — and that’s what they did!
The fixin’s for some good handloads. Look at the Big Horn
Armory wood upgrade — worth every cent!
Big Horn Armory 89
About five years later, Big Horn Armory owner Greg Buchel had the desire to build a lever gun sturdy enough to shoot the powerful .500 S&W cartridge in a John Browning-style lever gun. Makes sense, right? He knew the sleek model 92 was too small and he didn’t welcome the bulkiness of the 1886 Winchester. So, he combined the attributes of both and came out with a lever gun halfway between the ’92 and ’86, which happens to be 89 — hence the Big Horn Armory Model 89 came to fruition.
Buchel uses 17-4PH stainless steel, a steel three times stronger than that originally used by Winchester. The mid-sized action allows adjusting pivot pins for the carrier, release points of cartridge guides and other critical internal parts to form the correct geometry to consistently cycle the 500 S&W cartridges. Two large locking lugs keep the bolt locked solidly in the high pressure round. For a few extra bucks, Buchel offers beautifully stocked rifles. It’s well worth the money!
Northern Precision’s .500 bullets (left to right) — 350-grain, 450-grain and
600-grain bullets next to a drawn out .50 BMG case used for the bullet jacket.
The Load
Noody’s 500 bullets pack a punch from the large meplat he uses. Measured at 0.430″, this very blunt lead exposed nose transfers mega doses of energy. The tapered jacket allows perfect mushroom expansion without allowing the bullet to turn inside out. Tougher game like Cape Buffalo would benefit from Noody’s bonded bullets.
Looking at Big Horn Armory’s loading data, AA 1680 looked to be a good contender from what I had on hand. Using Hornady brass, Winchester Large Rifle primers and 42 grains of AA1680, I chronographed the 450-grain bullets right at 1,800 FPS. Accuracy at 50 yards using a Trijicon 6MOA red dot sight was just over an inch. With a 450-grain wide jacketed exposed nose bullet going 1,800 FPS, there’s not a lot of big game animals the bullet wouldn’t dispatch quickly.
Loads were assembled using Hornady dies with Tank’s Lee Classic Turret press.
Final Word
Using custom-made bullets isn’t for everyone. But if you enjoy handloading and take pride in shooting your own ammunition, Northern Precision has the bullet for the job. The 500 S&W magnum will handle the world’s largest game. Using a traditional lever gun during your hunting endeavors is a traditionally fun way of doing so. You’ll take pride in carrying your Big Horn Armory lever gun and you’ll rejoice in taking game with it!
Teddy Roosevelt enjoyed hunting with lever guns and you will too! He called his Winchester 1895 chambered for the .405 Winchester “Big Medicine” while hunting lions and other beasts in Africa.
Bill Noody’s 0.500″ bullets will allow you to “speak quietly while carrying a big stick” when loaded with .500 S&W cartridges in a Big Horn Armory Model 89 lever gun. They are a match that complement each other rather nicely.
—————————————————————————————-Hey don’t blame me if your gun blows up by using any hand loading info on this site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Grumpy who is Lawyer proof i.e. I am broke and POOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Choose your big game cartridge wisely: It can make the difference between elk steak or tag soup.
Dawn broke cold over the high country, with a threat of snow hanging in the air. Twelve cow elk grazed in a meadow at 11,500 feet, one small five-by-six bull still sleeping off his night of debauchery. I crept into place, rested my .300 Winchester Magnum atop a lightweight tripod, and squeezed the trigger. The bull never regained his feet.
Two years later I approached the same meadow, this time with a friend who carried a 6.5 Creedmoor on her shoulder and an elk tag in her pocket. Fresh elk tracks showed the way and we flushed another, bigger 5X6 bull. I cow called, my friend pressed the trigger, and another bull lay still in the snow. Both elk succumbed to a single shot. Only the duration of the kill was different. Mine died almost instantly; the other bull stayed on his feet for almost a minute, even though he was hit perfectly.
This bull never gained his feet after becoming acquainted with a 200-grain bullet from a .300 Win Mag. The .300 has long been a favored elk cartridge, and with good reason. It hits hard and penetrates deeply.
IS BIGGER BETTER?
For decades big, hard-hitting calibers held court across America’s hunting grounds. Recoil wasn’t considered the detriment it is today, indeed some shooters and hunters acclaimed hard-kicking rifles as superior, and accused those chambered in more mannerly cartridges as being sissified. This opinion was created by the projectile performance of the day. Simply put, the then-new high-velocity cartridges of the 20th century generated so much speed that traditional bullets struggled to maintain their composure when impacting heavy hide and bone. Bigger, heavier bullets had a better chance of holding together and penetrating deeply.
Modern projectile design offers fantastic accuracy and downrange terminal performance. Those elements can make a difference when you’re hunting the wide-open reaches of the west.
Today the pendulum has swung, and many hunters and shooters opine that bigger, harder-hitting calibers belong with folks of limited intelligence. According to these same hunters and shooters, anyone with enough electronic devices and high enough projectile BC (ballistic coefficient) can kill a mastodon at 1,000 yards with a 6mm Creedmoor. The one thing they do have right is that things have changed. Coming full circle, it’s all about bullet performance. Today’s premium projectiles are incredibly accurate and consistent. More to the point, they penetrate deeply and perform reliably at a wide variety of impact velocities. What this means is that today’s small, recoil-friendly calibers can kill as cleanly as yesterday’s bigger, harder-hitting calibers.
Elk are big, heavy-boned animals. Use a premium, deep-penetrating bullet. This bull was killed with a 6.5 Creedmoor, and bullet performance was good. However, the bull managed to stay on his feet for almost a minute after absorbing a perfect shoulder shot. A bigger bullet would have made quicker work.
IS SMALL AND SWEET SHOOTING BETTER?
Smaller calibers and cartridges kick less. They tend to be accurate and are certainly easier to shoot well. Loaded with a premium bullet they penetrate deeply and create a devastating wound channel. They do everything a big, hard-kicking caliber can do, right?
Wrong. There are two things they can never do as well:
Hit Hard: Two elements affect how hard a bullet impacts. The first is frontal diameter. The greater the frontal diameter, the more surface area and tissue the bullet impacts directly. Remember; surface area in a circle increases exponentially as diameter increases. The second element is weight. The heavier a projectile is the harder it hits. Consider the difference between getting hit by a pencil eraser traveling at 100 feet per second (fps), and a softball traveling the same speed. Neither will penetrate your skin, but the softball will hit much harder due to greater weight and diameter.
Penetrate Deep: In a nutshell, bigger, heavier bullets penetrate deeper than smaller, lighter projectiles of the same design. That said, modern-day bullet design has leveled the scale, to a degree. Projectiles such as Barnes’ TTSX, (a monolithic, solid copper/alloy bullet), and Federal Premium’s Terminal Ascent (built with a rapid-expanding jacketed lead front and a solid copper rear portion) maintain weight and drive deep, even in lighter, more friendly calibers.
The final word, though, is that a 200-grain bullet from a .300 Win Mag will out-penetrate a same-design 130-grain bullet sent from a 6.5 PRC.
This 147-grain “soft” bullet from a 6.5 PRC performed beautifully on this light-boned pronghorn, even with a full quartered-on shoulder shot. Don’t try it on elk, though.
THE UPSHOT
Light/sweet-shooting calibers are easier and friendlier to shoot, and now (with premium bullets) perform and penetrate admirably. Bigger calibers kick harder, but also hit harder and penetrate better. So what is best? The answer is, of course, situation and species specific. The light/sweet crowd will say, “It’s all about shot placement. Just wait for a good broadside shot and place your bullet right in the boiler room”.
To an extent that’s true. But what if your quarry never offers you a broadside shot? Let’s consider a common elk-woods scenario: You’re on a dream hunt in the Rocky Mountains. You’ve hunted hard, and you want to kill an elk in the worst way. On the last day of your hunt, you finally find a bull, a good one with heavy six-point antlers. You’re set up on a little rocky outcropping, using your pack as a dead rest. The bull is going over a thick timbered ridge and isn’t giving you a shot at all.
You keep your crosshairs on him, hoping against hope that he steps into a clearing and gives you a shot. Finally, it happens; 350 yards away he stops, turns, and bugles back down the canyon. You can see his shoulder clearly between tree trunks, but he’s steeply quartered toward you. Your crosshairs are steady, your finger on the trigger. But you subscribe to the “wait till they’re broadside” strategy, and inside your rifle’s 6.5 PRC chamber rests a rapid-expansion 140-grain bullet. What do you do?
If you’re honest and ethical, you let the bull walk.
At a hard quartered-on angle there is a fortress of hide, muscle, bone, and sinew that a bullet must penetrate before reaching this elk’s vitals. You need a tough, heavy bullet for this job.
The chance that your soft, rapid-expansion bullet will make it through the many inches of hide, flesh, bone, and sinew protecting the vitals at this angle is remote. You pull that trigger, and you’re likely in for a long, heart-wrenching recovery effort. But if you continue to wait for that broadside shot the bull will likely walk over that ridge and out of your life forever.
Now, hit rewind and change your chosen bullet to a 130-grain Federal Premium Terminal Ascent. Suddenly, you’ve completely altered this scenario. You’re not going to hit a massive old bull elk very hard with a 130-grain bullet at 350 yards, but an accurate shot with this deep-penetrating bullet will kill him, even through the point of the shoulder. And that’s what has changed. That’s the new difference.
Rewind the scenario again, and change your rifle to a .300 Win Mag. Shooting a 200-grain Federal Premium Terminal Ascent bullet, you will hit that bull very hard and kill him very quickly. No doubt about it, this is the better elk round. If you can handle the kick and shoot it well, by all means use it. But if the recoil loosens your fillings and crosses your eyes every time you squeeze the trigger, you better lighten up.
This 155-grain Federal Terminal Ascent bullet from a .280 Ackley Improved was recovered under the skin on the opposite side of an eland. It passed entirely through, breaking a shoulder en route. Stellar performance.
This scenario changes dramatically, of course, if the primary species you hunt is deer, pronghorn, or sheep. For smaller, lighter boned members of the big game family the 6.5 PRC and similar cartridges are optimal. Loaded with one of the premium bullets mentioned above they will penetrate into a deer’s vitals from any angle. Recoil is civilized, and terminal performance all you will ever need. But what if you use one rifle to hunt a broad spectrum of big game – elk one week, deer the next, and moose the third?
The author with a big mule deer harvested with a rifle chambered in .280 Ackley Improved; one of his favorite all-around big game hunting calibers.
In my opinion, the ideal solution for an all-around rifle is a mid-level cartridge like the .280 Ackley Improved, .30-06 Springfield, or 7mm Remington Magnum. Recoil generated by these cartridges will not rattle your teeth or cross your eyes, yet they hit hard enough and penetrate admirably. Loaded with premium bullets, they’re cheerfully adequate for everything from coyotes to Alaskan moose.
