Reloading shotgun shells...worth the $$$?

[Music] [Music] [Music] hey guys today we're going to do a little instructional on how we reload shotgun shells youth season down here in Louisiana is next Saturday the real season opens the Saturday after so I thought it'd be a good time we typically load about a thousand rounds per year that's with five of us shooting and that that typically gets us right around you know right around the right number we all shoot different jokes I'll go through that a little bit we all like different shot sizes so you know we don't make it easy for ourselves dad typically shoots a modified choke and likes number fours Brayden my oldest son is the same way he likes to modified and his Benelli shooting number fours Ethan and I typically shoot a Kicks 655 turkey choke with number seven steel it's kind of like shooting a rifle but but we get you know we get some 60 70 80 yard kills anything close you kind of tear them up but that's what the other guns are for in the blind but we typically issued a Kicks Cho 655 turkey with either number sixes sometimes but mostly number 7s that's what patterns the best Eli this is his first year he's 12 first year to shoot a shoot of 12-gauge he's been shooting the 20 gauge youth model but we got him actually it's a older my dad's Benelli Nova with a 24 inch barrel boy this thing is sharp and it's gonna be fun to shoot but he's gonna shoot a full show through there he says shooting number fours but we'll see how shoots and see how that is our our shadows that we reload we reload two and three-quarter inch shells typically this year price ranges a little depending on how much bulk that you buy but this year I'm able to reload a box of shells from just over nine dollars a box and this is with very high quality materials we use one shot holes typically Remington STS or nitro Gold's we use Winchester primer some high quality primers so some really good powder really good really good split wads from the same onewhat so you know it's not the seven dollar Walmart shells that we're reproducing this is some good high quality high quality shells that we you know that were running through so anyway stay tuned and we'll work you through the process and show you what it you know what it what it involves I got into this for about five hundred six hundred dollars the most expensive thing was the MEC still master reloader that we actually you know do it with and and then there's the scales and the charge bar and you know all that good stuff goes with it for but typically you know around five to six hundred dollars I've been reloading now for a bunch of years so I made my money back on the on the cost of the you know a box of shells versus what I would be you know buying them for in the store so we're making money on this deal plus we're good you know we're getting some good solid shelves we typically reload - I'm sorry for sixes and sevens and that kind of gets us you know gets the the variety of choke tubes and shells these shells typically get around 1600 feet per seconds muzzle velocity my Uncle Ed has a chronic refer or how I don't know what you call it a the thing that measures muzzle velocity so we we do the exact same formula that he uses and that's what he's getting so assume that we're somewhere around that rinks or some really fast shop and I hope y'all enjoy have a good day alright a little bit about our reloading process we use a MEK still master reloader our powder goes here our shot goes here this is our charge arge bar that allows us to tune in and set exactly the amount of powder and the amount of shot that we want to put per shell our primers are here and then down here we have five different stations right I'll show you what those things do the first station will first of all we start out with a once fired hole that has a used primer in it the first station knocks the old primer out and resizes the brass to perfectly circular if there's any uh you know if there's any distortions so that's what that just did knocked out the primer and resize the brass the second station does Reed puts a new primer into the show alright so now we have a new primer three things happen in this next station the first thing is we load the powder into the [ __ ] into the hole okay the second thing is that it loads our hole I'm sorry it loads our wad into the hole I always like to push that down to make sure it's tight and the third thing it does is puts the shot in okay next we're gonna put an overshot card in this just kind of holds everything in place and helps it keep keep it a little watertight right station number four pre crimps the hole okay so you can see there it started the crimp process and the last station actually cramps the hole okay so there we have a completed completed shell ready to be fired at speed that process can take usually takes about fifteen or twenty seconds so it's pretty quick you know reload them these are these buttons just as a picture representation of the different shot sizes we typically shoot are reloaded three different sizes number four is number six is number seven so we do one ounce shots so for just kind of a picture representation of how many you know how many shop are in that that load number four we have 190 pellets in one out shot number sixes we have three hundred and thirty pellets in one ounce of shot and number seven we have four hundred and forty shut in in one ounce of shot so typically number fours we shoot through modified chokes number sixes we shoot through full choke number 7s we love to shoot through turkey chokes real real tight the tightest turkey choke we can find that that gives us a range of Oh 60 70 yards anyway so just to give you a little representation of the number of shot per when we're done making shells we we've melted little beeswax and take a q-tip and just drop a a little bit on the crap that helps keep it waterproof and we have some pretty wet nasty days here in south Louisiana so sometimes the shells do get wet and this will this will give them a little extra protection to make sure no noise seeps and the the crimp there and that's the last step four bucks a month yeah there's a meeting on our final but I've got to reel it about a thousand rounds a year and this is about 900 so I'm probably gonna stop here and just leave a little bit to see if there's certain size shot that I need to fill in the gap with with the extra you know hundred or 200 so that's it in a box of nothing ready for the season so is it worth reloading your own shotgun shells and in my case I think it is if we look at the numbers there are several different ways you can look at it number one if you buy everything new last minute it'll cost or cost me about I've got my numbers right here about twelve dollars and twenty-five cents per box of shells to reload you can typically buy you know high quality shells like these in the store for sixteen maybe eighteen dollars a box the second way that you can do these is to buy everything last minute but to reuse your holes right so if you pick up your holes and keep them in decent shape don't let them sit in the water and rust you can tip reload these things two three four times you know until the and still the plastic then until the plastics starts split and then you can't get a good crimb but whenever you can reuse a hole then these things are about ten cents apiece so that brings your cost down for twenty five shells for box of shells with about two thousand fifty cents so that brings us down to about 975 per box you start seeing some pretty good savings there so the last way is if you actually reuse holes that you've already reloaded and you buy in bulk typically if you buy in bulk throughout the year whenever these companies do specials you can save ten fifteen percent you know sometimes free shipping all that good stuff so that brings your price down to about 850 875 a box so at that point it's about half the price to you know to reload the box of shells time if you think that you know the video shows about thirty seconds you know to reload per shell you know times a thousand shells that we reload if you do the math that ends up being about 250 hours that I spend reloading these shells ten point four one days now I don't sit down and do that all at once I typically do it throughout the year whenever it's raining or storming or you know there's just nothing else to do at night when I can't sleep you know I'll knock out a box of them so if you factor in the time I don't know what your time's worth but you know if you have a little bit of spare time and you like to stay busy I found that you can reload a box of shells for about half the price that you you know that you buy the same quality shells for at the store so there you go it's worth it for us y'all have a good day okay

Channel: Cruze's Louisiana Outdoors

Views: 88,136

Keywords: shotgun, duck hunting, hunting, duck, wood duck, outdoors, mallards, shotgun shells, shells, reloading, reloads, Mec, Steelmaster, Steel Master, Steel shot, Louisiana, Cruze's Louisiana Outdoors, Bass fishing

Id: WTmaMAPguzs

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019