Beware of Multi-Load Syndrome

Since we’ve gotten into the perils of handloading, there’s one more pitfall that I should put on the list, and that is Multi-Load-Syndrome, or MLS (If there is an actual disease called MLS, I apologize to it and its victims and whatever organization is trying to stamp it out.) which usually afflicts beginning handloaders who develop feelings of omnipotence.

Usually, the victim will have begun loading for one of the more versatile cartridges, such as the .30/06. Since he’s a deer hunter, he will whomp up some nice 150-grain loads for whitetails, but then decide that 150 grains is a bit on the light side in case he should run into a black bear, so he’ll invest in 165s and stuff a bunch of them into cases, after, of course, appropriate expenditures of money for new powders, primers, and bullets.

Then he’ll read something about how the best all-around load for the .30/06 is the 180-grain, so through the process he goes again, and all is well until he is told that a hunter with a .30/06, loaded with 200-grain Swift A-Frames, does not need a .338, so fearsome an instrument does it become with these slugs (probably true, by the way). So, after immeasurable difficulty finding the damn things, not to mention the expense, he is truly ready for everything.

And so there he is with a whole shelf full of loaded .30/06 ammo, and then he discovers as the years turn over that he hardly uses any of it. He will either buy a new rifle, or new rifles, to handle diversified hunting, or sell the original .30/06 and find that no one wants his handloads, or never get the chance to hunt Alaska moose and use the 200-grain A-Frames. You get the picture.

It’s much cheaper to figure out what you’re going to use a rifle for, and work up one load for it. But it’s not as much fun.

And then there’s the all-too-common practice of finding a real good load and turning out 500 rounds. Thirty years from now, you’ll be looking at the 400 rounds you never used and wondering what the hell you were thinking.