[Jeff Higgins]

Another great reason to reload, Tim - you can make ammo that is either not commonly available, or not available at all.

In my own case, I can cast bullets I cannot buy, and load them in a manner that the factories either cannot or won't. That's the real attraction for me. If I were just cranking out volumes of factory available stuff, I would soon get bored with it. Granted, there was a time when handloading was a great way to "beat" factory ballistics, with better bullets and carefully tailored loads for a given gun. Nowadays, a handloader cannot really improve upon factory available ammo. Any bullet you can name is available factory loaded, and now they are using non-canister grades of powders not sold to reloaders, so they can beat our velocities as well. About the only place we can still "beat" the factories is in accuracy, but only for a specific gun.