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How often do you swap out your carry ammo for fresh out of the box stuff? My carry ammo has been in my Sig for well over a year now and the Critical Defense stuff is showing some signs of being in a carry gun for that long. I recently picked up a couple of new boxes and am thinking of replacing it and shooting the old stuff in my Bersa to make sure that can handle the ammo as well. Thoughts?

I run my "carry" ammo through about once per year unless it show signs of wear like set-back, damage to the nose of the bullet etc...

Ok, most die hard CHL holders will tell you 6 months max but honestly I go through a mag of carry ammo in almost all my carry guns at least 3 times a year so I don't worry about it. The only thing I watch for is bullet set back. As long as you keep replacing your chambered round and oils and water don't reach the powder or primer you have little to worry about. I had the same carry ammo in one of my 9mms for almost two years and all three mags went bang.

Never unless it has been cycled a bunch and shows markings/bullet issues.

Waste your money all you want, but ammo is more than capable of lasting longer than our current lifetime.

I manage my magazines so most of the time only the top 2 rounds get chambered when I unload and reload (like at the range when I'm going to be using only target ammo.) When they get 4 or 5 nicks from the extractor on the case rims (easily felt by rotating the rim between thumb and forefinger), I drop those into my range bag for practice ammo and replace them with 2 new ones. Setback is not a problem at that point, and I can be sure that there are no damaged rims that might interfere with case extraction when that's really important.

This system gives me enough changes that I rarely fire brand new carry ammo, and I get double duty out of each round.

CoffeeNut wrote:How often do you swap out your carry ammo for fresh out of the box stuff? My carry ammo has been in my Sig for well over a year now and the Critical Defense stuff is showing some signs of being in a carry gun for that long. I recently picked up a couple of new boxes and am thinking of replacing it and shooting the old stuff in my Bersa to make sure that can handle the ammo as well. Thoughts?

I use Critical Defense sometimes but they are cannelured and crimped so you don't have to worry much about setback with them.

On my Ranger-Ts and HSTs I will rotate out of the box every few months mostly out of prudence rather than necessity.

Excaliber wrote:I manage my magazines so most of the time only the top 2 rounds get chambered when I unload and reload (like at the range when I'm going to be using only target ammo.) When they get 4 or 5 nicks from the extractor on the case rims (easily felt by rotating the rim between thumb and forefinger), I drop those into my range bag for practice ammo and replace them with 2 new ones. Setback is not a problem at that point, and I can be sure that there are no damaged rims that might interfere with case extraction when that's really important.

This system gives me enough changes that I rarely fire brand new carry ammo, and I get double duty out of each round.

I like that system!