N.Z. Shooters “Catching On To Hand-loading”

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 14

N.Z. Shooters “Catching On To Hand-loading”

New Zealand sportsmen are “catching ont to hand-loading quite rapidly,” according to Mr Vernon D. Speer, of Lewiston, Idaho ,a prominent manufacturer of bullets for sporting and police small arms in the United States. Mr Speer is visiting Christchurch during a short business trip to New Zealand.

Speer bullets are precisionmade for hand-loading in the cartridge, which enables the use of the one cartridge many times over, and thus reduces the cost of ammunition. It is practised by most professional shooters in the Australian and New Zealand outback, and increasingly by amateur sportsmen.

“Hand-loading out here in New Zealand is about where

the United States was 30 years ago,” Mr Speer said. He reported brisk business with New Zealand agents selling bis bullets. Mr Speer said he was the second-biggest manufacturer of bullets for hand-loading in the United States. His plant used five tons of lead a week. In the United States hunting season, Mr Speer fires a few bullets himself—he goes after moose, wapiti, and bear. But in Canterbury, he will have time only for a fishing trip, to Lake Coleridge.

Early next week, Mr Speer and his wife will visit Queenstown and Milford Sound, travelling by air, and return to Christchurch on January 5 to catch an aircraft for Sydney.