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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?

Go to a range shoot once a week, at least.
I try to go twice a week.

That's a good question that I don't have an answer to. I've shot some really old ammo before and I've never had any failures to speak of but that doesn't mean I'd want to keep 20 year old ammo in my EDC.

I usually don't go over a year.

IMO, it is a good idea to practice with your carry ammo occasionally.
Speaking for myself, high dollar carry ammo is just too expensive for practice, and I will use reloads or Winchester white box for targets. But I will also fire a magazine of carry ammo. #1, it may feel a little different than the cheap ammo. #2, if the time ever comes when I must be serious, I want full confidence in my ammo, no doubts whatever that it will shoot where I aim and function flawlessly.
This ensures a slow but steady turnover in the expensive stuff.

About every six months I use my carry mags. I figure that with the exposure to the environment, hot, cold, etc. that they go through, we're placing more stress on that ammo than stuff that's in our safes or a nice cool dry cabinet.

Jeff B.

I usually stick to a year give or take a a month. I can say this, the carry ammo ive fired that was a year+ out hasnt failed yet so I trust 1 year is good.

Somewhat related question, how often do you guys swap you mags, if ever? My HD pistol mags are always fully loaded as well as carry mags. How long should we expect the springs to last after being compressed all of the time?

I'm like most on here I will usually not go over a year with my carry ammo. I generally change it out at the first of the year and then put the old ammo into rotation at the range.

Carry ammo - one year.
Mags - usually every two months or so (if I remember), but no longer than a year, when I switch out carry ammo.

Except for the round in the chamber, which I'll shoot if I've had to load and unload it a few times to practice shooting, almost never. The ammo in the mag is not going to cease to function. I've shot 30 carbine ammo from the 50's after it had been around for 60 years. I fully expect all of my quality ammo to outlive me.

I have separate mags for carry and practice. All my carry mags functioned without problems for at least 100 rounds of the carry ammo I use for a particular gun before they became carry mags. If something changes in the gun or I use different ammo then I'll retest everything.

Each range (avg. 6 year or more) visit first shot is my carry or HD weapon with SD ammo at least one full mag if not two. I want to know they still are functioning as they should. More worried about pistol function than ammo age.

Regarding the question of magazine loading/springs -- most reliable sources say with modern magazines/springs it is the number of compression/decompression cycles that weakens the springs rather than keeping them under constant pressure.

I try to cycle enough new carry ammo to be sure it feeds/extracts well. After that, magazines stay fully loaded for one to two years before ammo is replaced with new and the old is discharged in practice. Other than these times, practice is with different, lower-cost practice ammo loaded in different magazines. All magazines are numbered so that any feed issues can be correlated to a given magazine which is removed from rotation until the issue is discovered and resolved.

VMI77 wrote:Except for the round in the chamber, which I'll shoot if I've had to load and unload it a few times to practice shooting, almost never. The ammo in the mag is not going to cease to function. I've shot 30 carbine ammo from the 50's after it had been around for 60 years. I fully expect all of my quality ammo to outlive me.

Same here. 2 years ago, I found a half full box of S&W ammo that I remember buying in the late 70's(the box was a full 50 when I bought it, lol), took it over to the range, and all shot them all without even a hiccup.

One other thing I do, maybe I just suffer from OCD, whenever I buy new carry ammo, I take 6 random rounds from the box and include them in my practice just to assure myself there are no issues, I load them in a mag I normally carry and shoot all six. I know I'm just paranoid

Went to Academy today and bought some new Hornady critical defense with the FTX bullet.