With 9mm being harder and harder to find, I'm carefully hoarding my precious little stash of Federal 9BP, plus some odds and ends I've been able to find. I have some ball, and I can handload some practice ammo. Even if this lasts a year or two, I'll probably be OK. I'm worse off in .38, with a few speedloaders holding mis-matched self-defense ammo. It looks funny, but it'll work.
But let's imagine I only had one box of ammo in 9mm. When that was gone, I'd be switching to .44 Special and my Rossi 720. It's a good caliber, and I have enough to last me for a while, including a small amount for practice.
I can also reload .44 Spl. There was a day when almost no one would consider carrying handloads, but it may come to that (though I hope not). If it does, a wadcutter from a .44 Spl. is likely to settle a confrontation quickly, and it's accurate.
Years ago, Ross Seyfried wrote a fantastic article entitled "When It Matters," about making the most perfect handloads possible for hunting, or competition or carry. He limited his batches to something like 10 or 20 rounds, carefully inspected each case, including the flash hole, and fully sized them. He used a magnifier to see that each primer had an anvil and priming compound, then used a hand priming tool and checked for high primers on a hard surface. He used powder he'd used with success before (not opening a new canister), and measured the powder and visually inspected all cases with a bright light to make sure that the same amount of powder was in each, before seating each bullet and crimping. Then he inspected each round carefully, and stood each on a digital scale to make sure there was powder in each round. He then made sure each round would fit the chamber of the firearm. I think he may have fired a few to test, as well.
Probably not gonna happen, but maybe some of you got caught off guard. Are you switching to something you were able to find, before everything disappeared? I'm still seeing some oddball calibers, like .22 TCM, for sale, but none of the popular cartridges. For a while around here, I kept seeing .44 Spl. and .45 Colt, but no more.
Just askin'
Dirty Bob