...doing an ammo inventory. For some reason, I found myself feeling miserable last night. I could not get a wink of sleep and was hitting the head about every 20 minutes or so. I decided that instead of just pissing the time away watching TV, (yes I was weeing about every 20 minutes, my water pill yesterday must have been overpowered or something like that), I would do something that needed getting done. So I inventoried my ammo.
There were at least a few times, when I came to my senses, and I figured I should stop and get some sleep, especially once it hit about 1:00 AM but then I had the overwhelming urge to hit the head again. So, I just stayed up and kept doing the inventory. It wound up that I was finally able to get some sleep at about 0400, maybe 20 minutes after I had finished the inventory. I figure that I inventoried everything in my ammo stores except what I have in a grab & go ammo can. I am not going to tell you my total round count but say that I am fairly impressed with how much ammo I have. Granted that about 30% of my ammo cache is made up of 22LR but while that used to be something frowned upon nowadays it is pretty nice to have enough 22LR on hand to last me at least through at least a few years of shooting. The rest of my ammo store consists of 22WMR, 32 Auto, 9mm, 45ACP, 223, 5.56x45mm, 7.62x39mm, 7.62x54R, 308 WIN, 8mm Mauser, 35 REM, and 12 gauge slugs, buckshot and game loads between 6 and 9 shot.
Gone are the days when I also had numerous calibers of ammunition for which I owned zero guns. I traded or sold off that ammo when the ammo buying frenzy under Obama's first term and early second term was ongoing (I maybe would still be doing it if I had any left over). Sometimes I kind of sort of almost regret having gotten rid of all the ammo in calibers for guns I don't own or ammo Brendan and I rarely shot. I had things like 380 ACP, 38 Special, 357 Magnum, 40 S&W, and a lot more 223 than I have now (I got rid of most of that in favor of 5.56x45mm). I don't think there is really a shortage of any of them now but the prices are so high now, I could have made out like even more of a bandit had I waited to sell them. Besides that, it was nice to know that if I ever needed any of those calibers, I had them on hand, I don't have them now though.
What I do have though, is a good number of rounds I actually shoot though my own guns. One thing I discovered, that I need to take aim at, is that way too much of my 9mm JHP ammo is pretty friggin old and needs replacement. I just ordered 500 rounds of Federal Hy-Shok 115 grain JHP rounds today as a start in that direction. Once I have enough of the newer 9mm JHP rounds on hand, I will start using the older ones as practice ammo. I am not all that concerned that the older ammunition would fail at the range but why take a chance with ammo that is used for self-defense. Some good amount of it has to be from the mid to late nineties, and one batch of a few hundred NATO spec rounds I have, and some small amount of JHP, is probably from as far back as the late eighties. Modern ammo is not like the old corrosive stuff that could last for half a century or more; the modern stuff is said to have a shelf life of only about 25 years at best (although I don't believe that but why chance it being right or not). Nowadays, I mark my ammo with the year I got it on the outside of the boxes. That way, I can shoot up the older stuff as I acquire newer ammo and not have to guess at how long ago I purchased it.
As for the inventory itself, man it takes and awful long time to go though a footlocker and numerous ammo cans chock full of sooty goodness. I was at it from around 10:00 PM through 3:30 AM. This inventory took somewhat longer than others, not only because of the amount of ammunition I counted but because I decided to make good use of Microsoft Excel. I am most definitely not an Excel master, not even half good at it, but I figured out how to do a passable inventory using it. I included columns for caliber, bullet weight, bullet type (such as FMJ or JHP), manufacturer, year of acquisition, number of rounds, and notes I felt should be included. Then I used an auto tally function for to sum up the amount of rounds in each caliber, sometimes even subdividing them more by doing it separately for JHP versus FMJ rounds in each respective caliber. Not only does the Auto Sum function add up the numbers but if you change any given amount to a lower number, it also subtracts and shows the difference. That way, if I shoot 150 rounds of 45 Auto JHP, of any given brand I have listed, I just change the inventory count for that particular brand of ammo by the appropriate amount and the Auto Sum feature gives me the new total number of all of my 45 ACP JHP rounds.
Now that I set that up spread sheet, my inventory process will be an ongoing affair each time I use ammo and the totals for each caliber will be readily available to me without having to do an actual count. That is so long as I remember to subtract however much of each specific caliber, type and brand of ammo each and every time I shoot up any of it. Hopefully I can get Brendan to do the same. If we do that, it is going to save me from having to do several hours of tedious boring work every six months or so.
All the best,
Glenn B
