I am running just a bit LOW ON .45 ACP AMMO

Above is my "working" .45 ACP shelf; this is the mix of stuff I choose ammo from before going to the range with a 1911 pattern .45 pistol. I'm down to just over 550-rounds of 230 grain ball ammo, and that's it for probably a good long time because of the current ammo-buying-panic.  The rest of what you see is a mix of different hollowpoint weights and brands.

I now have far more .45 ACP hollow point ammo than I do ball ammo.

During an inventory of my ammo cache I was surprised to find that I still had 200-rounds of 230-grain Black Talon ammo.  Years ago I found that it fed in all of the 1911 pattern .45s that I owned; I was sorry to see it removed from the store shelves back in the day. 

I'm down to 800-rounds of 230-grain Federal Hydra Shok, split between this full ammo can and what I have left on the working shelf.  This hollow point ammo has a good reputation for decisively ending threats BUT I have only one 1911 pattern pistol that can feed them consistently; that pistol is an old(er) Wilson Combat CQB (circa year 2000; the WC0 serial# prefix spans 1996 -2005 IIRC).  If I was down to using my Colts and my generic .45 ACP 1911 pattern pistols for personal defense I would probably chamber a Hydra Shok for use as a first shot and follow it with ball ammo from the magazine(s). Playing .45 ACP hardball for self defense is full of peril due to the danger of over-penetration; that heavy round nose slug may sail through the torso of the bad guy and whack into an innocent.  The 45 ACP was created for war. Wartime gunfighting is somewhat different than is urban / suburban self-defense (so I've been told, I have no experience in either).  

Once upon a time (just before my retirement) I boasted of having over 5,000-rounds of ball and hollow point .45 ACP ammo. I was preparing for frequent fun times at the shooting range, not a damn civil war. Over the years since I retired I've fired off a lot of .45 ACP (because it's GREAT FUN and good practice) but I bought very little. 

 

My grand total inventory of .45 ACP ammo now stands at around 1,700 2,300-rounds total (see addendum below).  That's not as comfortable a margin as I would like but it is what it is; if I run the .45 ACP inventory down to a total of ~1,000 rounds I'd likely quit taking pistols of that caliber to the range until the ammo shortage was over.  The .45 ACP is not my primary personal defense choice but it is what I would work down to if I ran low (or out) of 9MM, .38 Super, .38 Special, and .357 Magnum.

10/23/2020 EDITED TO ADD THE FOLLOWING:

Yep, I found some more .45 ACP ball that I had stashed.  I vaguely remember firing off the contents of one can of this stuff (600-rounds) circa 1990 and setting this can aside.  IIRC, it looked to be brass MILSPEC ball (reputedly Korean era) and it was very functional in my pistols but seemed overly smoky; that made the antiquated local indoor range back then very unhappy with me so I quit using it. I'll have to request a demo session with my current fave indoor range to see if the modern air-handling system there can handle it.

10/24/2020 EDITED TO ADD THE FOLLOWING:

Hell, I figured that I better open the spam can mentioned above to see exactly what was in it; it has been many years since I used up the first can.  According to the interwebz, the T1F01A marking is a Taiwan ammo code.

50 rounds to a box, 12 boxes inside the can = 600 rounds; it's nice to know the round count for certain.

I'll assume the 70 denotes the year of manufacturing as being 1970.

I tried all kinds of magnets on it and found no trace of steel.  Other than I remember it being a bit smoky, this ammo should be suitable for indoor range use.  We shall see ...

😎

"My advice to you is to get yourself a gun and learn how to use it.”

------------------------------

---------------