What to make of an American Rifleman artilce
In American Rifleman, Oct 2021, pg 81 on an article titled RCBS: Handloading's Helping Hand by John Haviland "field editor" is the following, which surprises me. It contains quotes from a RCBS representative named Hemeyer.
"About the only shot-shell re-loaders now are target shooters who want that one exact load for their shotgun and hunters making specialty loads like for pheasant hunting
Actually, this doesn't surprise me much, as shot-shell reloading is hardly an economic savings. You can often buy a given load for the same as you can assemble it from purchased shot, wads and powder. For years the only thing I hunted with was a 12 gauge one ounce Lee slug in a Federal Gold Medal hull with 50 grains of Blue Dot backing it up. Ouch! This was a huge savings over commercial deer slugs, though. How many states are still forcing the shotgun-only thing, though? I know Ohio gave it up. Is Illinois the only one left? And buckshoot can be cast up. Savings can be had there too. The only shotshells I've ever reloaded have been slugs and buck.
Hemeyer went on to say that RCBS may discontinue its shot-shell reloading lines.
This is where it gets interesting:
"Bullet casting remains prevalent only among handloaders of those cartridges that lack commonly available projectiles. The difficult of finding inexpensive lead alloys--and the sun setting on the growth of cowboy action shooting--have also stalled the practice of bullet casting. The use of progressive presses to crank out volume so handgun cartridges has also waned in recent years because of inexpensive factory-loaded cartridges like 9mm Luger. "
He then went to talk about the hot new area being precision rifle shooting, and making and selling special high precision dies for that discipline. Excuse me, but wasn't bench-rest and national match always a "precision" sort of thing? And it is certainly true that cheap 9mm and 223 are not much of a savings to reload if your only priory is things going bang.
Do you guys really believe this to be accurate? Or more like an excuse?
I no longer have any cartridges that lack commonly available projectiles. Everything I own I can buy, if it can be BOUGHT! Frankly the reason why I like cast bullets is not only because they are cheaper, especially as bore size goes up, compare a 50 cent Hornady XTP to 4 cents of lead in 44 or 45, it's because many classic loads used cast bullets and they work. With handguns, especially big bore revolvers, there is absolutely nothing wanting in a cast boolit...
And then there's the matter of replica guns, which must use lead projectiles. Those swaged balls Hornady sells are mighty pricey.
It seems to me that the boolit casting landscape is better than ever too. There are more molds, of better quality, than every. I have no problem sourcing lead and never have. Scrapyards abound in Indiana and Ohio. Though I think too many casters got accommodated to "free" wheel-weights which IMO were never that good of a alloy for boolit casting, only passable. Companies like roto-metals have made buying the proper alloyant metals so easy, too.
I mean if RCBS wants to ditch bullet casting, so be it, but I think it has more to do with RCBS being part of ammunition manufacturer (CCI/SPEER/FEDERAL all part of Vista Outdoors).
Another thing is that with cast boolits you can pretty much recycle them. I have a couple hundred pounds of bullet metal that I have been cycling through for years now catching most of them in my sand trap. I remelt them and cast them again.