Saving your good ammunition for when you need it and getting the cheap stuff for the firing range is a good way to save your money. At the range, all you’re shooting is paper or foam, so why blow through a box of $50 rounds when you can get away with spending a fraction of that?
Smaller caliber ammunition doesn’t necessarily translate to more affordable. For hand guns, typically the cheapest rounds fit in a .38 caliber revolver.
Specifically, wadcutter and semi-wadcutter bullets are the most economical for long days spent at the shooting range.
There are a number of factors making wadcutters less expensive, and subsequently even better for target shooting performance.
For starters, wadcutters- unless they are specially designed- cannot be fed from a pistol magazine to a gun chamber. Most wadcutter bullets have a flat or nearly flat front and can therefore primarily only be used in a revolver. Round point total or full metal bullets are designed for complete penetration and experience very little expansion on impact, unlike, say, hollowpoint rounds. Because they expand very little, they tend to fully exit the target body.
A complex design to prevent expansion, traditional bullets is composed of a brass capsule- or jacket- and a lead fire rim. But because the wadcutter bullet type is entirely exposed lead, it is a lot less costly to manufacture and produce. The solitary material and simple design keep production costs extremely low.
For target shooting, a wadcutter cuts a very clean hole through the paper target, reducing point errors.
What bullets do you prefer using at the range? Let us know in the comments section below!