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Well, if you team up with some guys to go make a move on some enemy somewhere, and you are down to 5 rounds or so, your buddies are going to want to donate a few rounds to you so you can maybe save their backsides when it gets hairy. If you’re carrying a stupid old 303, what are the odds, you think, that one of the others might have a few of those 303s in their pocket?

I’d say you’re SOL and your buddies aren’t gonna be real happy about you carrying an old relic that will turn into a club in about 5 pulls of the trigger.

Leave the relic on the wall and get something chambered for a NATO round. Stock up on NATO ammo. THen when you do team up with some buddies, YOU can be the one that donates a few rounds to the poor schlub that runs low and YOU can be the one that tells the yay-hoo with the 303 to give the antique back to gramps and go find something that doesn’t use extinct bullets, ramrods, or flint.

BTW, most of us are going to be too old to actually go hunting the enemy(if we aren’t already there) if and when it comes down to that. The oldsters with weapon caches will not likely be more than secret resupply bases for the kids that are doing the fighting. You won’t even be useful for that if all you got is a hodg-podge of old junk that nobody’s(meaning the kids that are doing the fighting) ever heard of.

If people are going to be "hunting the enemy", then they can do it with whatever rifle and caliber floats their boat. Others have commented on the "field resupply", which you turned into some sort of futile, storm-the-machine-gun-nest scenario. How about picking an easier target, like a supply truck crew at the end of a convoy?

Ultimately, I agree that you should have a long gun that chambers NATO ammo. Most of the ammo that you'll encounter when "hunting" will likely be 5.56x45, not 7.62x51. Taking the enemy's firearms isn't any tougher than going after the ammo alone. So, either buy something appropriate beforehand - or get one as outlined above *before* you're down to five rounds of .303/8mm Mauser/.30-06/whatever.

As an aside, there are a bunch of Ishapore Enfield SMLEs out there in 7.62 NATO. The definition of "relic" gets sort of fuzzy around the edges.

ANY rifle capable of “minute of man” at 500 yards is worth having, even if it only comes with ten rounds of ammo (after being zeroed of course.)

There are very good uses for a rifle that can hit at 500 yards, fired only one shot per engagement. Then it goes back into its hiding place.

>If you’re carrying a stupid old 303, what are the odds, you think, that one of the others might have a few of those 303s in their pocket?<

Have you ever thought to stock up on powder, primers and few thousand bullets or maybe just a bullet mold. An old car battery will turn out about 100 bullets for you when it is melted down.