How Many Rounds Will You Typically Take For Deer Hunting?

[Glanceblamm]

Experience has taught me that I only needed one shot plus a backup or coup-de-grace shot if needed. Reality always had me take the possible's (muzzleloading term) for at least
Four backup shots not counting the one in the tube through 22years of hunting with a traditional Black Powder rifle and the extra's were never needed for any reason.

In the last four years though I have taken a revolver only and figured that a couple cylinders full would be way more than enough which proved to be true, but in the last two years I Have taken three cylinders worth of ammo with me!. This year I will take a full 20 round box with me which really makes no sense at all. I think that my subconscious is making me do this And I am trying to come up with some reasons for it.

Age And Physical Condition: Used to be that I could whip my weigh in wildcats but no more.

Encounters With Wild Dog Packs: Remote but not improbable as someone here in the lower 48, if not our own State is going to have some trouble as per the statistics.

Encounters With Coyotes: Much easier to scare off than feral dogs but I know of a few cases where Coyotes beat Bow hunters to their downed deer. The Coyotes were very unhappy with the human intrusion and in some cases would hold their ground or only back off slightly while still showing aggression. My Son-in-law's father owns a large tract of woods and he (the Father) spoke of having a good scare when he got caught in the pre-dawn darkness and had those yotes both behind and in front of him in close proximity with every single one howling.
What he did was to load & fire a couple of shots into the ground in front of him and one behind him then quickly made his way to the tree stand. This left him with two rounds out of the five pack of 12ga slugs but he elected to stay on stand and got a one shot kill towards mid morning.

Encounters With Two Legged Predators: Soome are braggards, some are bullies, some are just plain mean as they may just want to run you out of an area that you have legal access to or perhaps they may just want to rob you of your equipment or such. They can have many ploy's and may even talk you out of your deer if you let them. It it is five on one and you are talking about a downed deer that you know is yours, it is best to just let them have the deer. I will allow absolutely no one into my personal space though (the full diameter of ones outstreched arms) without swift retribution. Violence can escalate quickly during these situations but it is very important that you hold your ground as some of these guys are cowardly and will back off if you call their bluff.

Spending The Night In The Woods: Hopefully you have some contacts and someone knows where you are but an impromptu hunt may make it nessary for you to spend a few hours to the whole night and part of the next day in the woods. A broken leg could cause this or worse, a compound fracture. The wildlife (read Coyotes to bobcats) or even the feral dogs can sense This and may choose to haze you to see if ther is an opportunity for them.

To sum this all up: I figure that if you are going to be spending the day in the woods to include hiking in at pre-dawn and hiking back out at dusk, ammunition is going to be the very last thing that you would want to run out of should you get in a scrape. Perhaps I am being paranoid but you might have some reasons of your own to add to the list?

[Swampman]

When I hunt with my single shots I carry 5 rounds.

When I hunt with my lever action, or a bolt action I carry a 20 round box.

I'm not sure why.

[Oh dan e-boy]

I know I am only going to need a couple of cartridges to end a hunt...; but I take a couple boxes in my truck gear in case I bump my scope- or think I did, on the way to spike camp. On my person I have a full clip -legal in a shortened magazine for my AR, In my bolts, I fill em' up and I take another 5 rounds in a vacuum pack pouch I make up fresh in my food vac before I leave the house. Trimmed real tight these rounds will keep dry and not rattle around either. These stay on my person, like matches and compass.

Ed

[Graybeard]

I routinely carry my ammo in an MTM ammo wallet. For bottle neck rounds they hold nine generally but you can often tuck a couple or three more to the side so generally 11 or 12 for any bottle neck round I'm hunting with. I never go without a handgun whether it's my main hunting gun or not. I'll also have an ammo wallet full of ammo for it and if I'm not traveling where it must be unloaded it will be loaded plus the ammo wallet which for straight wall pistol rounds normally holds a dozen.

If I go out of state on a hunt I'll take much more with me to the hunt location but on any given day the same goes to the field with me whether local or out of state.

[BBF]

an old trick( best word I can think of) for the old timers out west was to drill two or three  holes into the butt end of the stock and stick a couple of  water proof wrapped rounds in it.

Locally about five rounds will suffice for me, no snakes, yotes or other larger beast to worry about. Packing a handgun is a NO NO here. Anything away from home a 50 round pack will come along since all will be handloads and a trip to Wally Mart won't help.

[GRIMJIM]

I may carry too much with me. A loaded cylinder in my revolver and two speedloaders. Shotgun loaded plus 10 extra rounds in my backpack. Rifle loaded plus the rest of the box in my backpack. When I went to Canada I brought two boxes with me, though I only carried one at a time and only used two rounds, one for each caribou.

I learned the valuable lesson of carrying extra ammo the hard way. I was going back to camp on a deer hunt when I first started hunting and decided to stop at a spot for the last few minutes of light (about an hour maybe). I was sitting on the side of a hill overlooking a small ravine. A nice buck walks out of the woods on the other side. I shot at it 3 times and missed. It was pretty far away and looking back at it now I probably shouldn't have taken the shot.  The buck goes into the ravine and walks right up to me and lays down 20 yards away. I am now out of ammo as I wasn't expecting to even see anything let alone get off a shot and only went in with the ammo in the gun. All I could do was sit there and look at it. It was getting dark so I told the deer to get the hell out of here, which he did at the sound of my voice and I left.

I have been carrying extra ammo ever since.

[kevthebassman]

I carry what is in the gun, plus a full reload.  99% of my hunting is done locally, and this is how I do it.  On the rare occasion when I do go to public land, I carry what's in the gun plus what's left in the box for a total of 20.

[Cheesehead]

I carry exactly 27 rounds. That is what the magazine in my 6.8spc AR15 holds.

Cheese

[DCRthe3rd]

I have been for ages been a firm believer in 20rds for my deer rifle.
Tell ya why , 1st of all I don't find 20rds to be that heavy , and should I let some bullets loose that don't produce meant , "missed shot, checking the guns zero, shooting something else for whatever reason, etc" that still means if I don't restock on ammo upon arriving home , and I hunt the next day , I still have enough ammo to play out the events again if need be. Now I have never needed these 20rds and often not more than the 1 shot per deer, but if I could forsee the future , I would be out betting on horses and not talking to you people. And frankly even after the hunt is over and I have meat , I see no point in carrying an unloaded rifle , so I plan on having ammo that I won't be shooting for the return trip. If I needed to cut weight , there are so many places I could find to do so.
Now if I only have 19rds , unlikly since I handload , I won't loose sleep over it , but 20 is what I like to have , give or take a few.
Pistols for big game get 3 cylinder fulls , 18rds

[S.B.]

I hunt with S&W revolvers. I carry a full cylinder and one HKS speedloader. Because I already have the speedloaders and do not need to spend more money on gear also, it's much easier to load with them and there is no rattling in my pocket(as with single cartridges).

[Casull]

The last couple of years, I have carried two revolvers when hunting, a scoped Super Redhawk in .454 for shots over 50 yards and an iron sighted Model 29 in .44 for the close stuff.  Since I hunt several hundred miles from home, I carry a 50 round ammo box for each (all reloads), but when actually hunting, I carry the two loaded revolvers and one speedloader for the .454 (don't ask why, I could put the .44's in it as well), so 18 rounds total.  Last two years, I came back from the woods with 17 rounds and a deer.