Cartridge bag, pocket, belt or speedloader - the best choice for your shooting

Shooting has many tribes - the pigeon shots, the wildfowlers, the high bird shots, the syndicate stalwarts - but shooting also has many levellers. We have all, from the denizen of the smartest grouse moor to the one-for-the-pot rabbiter, been soaked to the skin by a sudden shower, or cursed the air blue because we’ve unaccountably missed with both barrels again. And we have all had to solve the same two problems: what is the best way to carry your cartridges around, and what’s the best way to reload? The answer… well, like so much in shooting, that depends.

Each shooting situation presents different challenges, so the gun who does a lot of walked up shooting may well have a different solution to the problem to the gun shooting on bigger driven days. Plus, of course, there’s personal preference to take into account.  I spoke to Ashley Shaw of Fine Shooting Accessories, purveyors of, well… fine shooting accessories to get his advice on what solutions there are out there and which ones suit which situations.

Carrying cartridges for walked up shooting

When you’re covering a good few miles over the course of a day’s shooting, and you need to have your arms free from encumbrances, lugging a heavy cartridge bag around with you is out of the question. After all, even on the best day’s walked up shooting you’re unlikely to work your way through more than a boxful of shells, so you don’t need carrying capacity so much as you need even weight distribution and freedom of movement. While I have sometimes found that extracting cartridges from a belt can be tricky, especially when they are new, speed of reloading is rarely a factor on a walked up day.

For this style of shooting a cartridge belt is ideal. The double row artridge belt pictured, from Fine Shooting Accessories, holds 50 shells: more than enough. Wearing a cartridge belt has the advantage of spreading the weight evenly, and avoiding the nuisance of a cartridge bag bumping off your hip all day. 

Ashley Shaw of Fine Shooting Accessories recommends that when buying a cartridge belt you take extra care when measuring for size, saying: “Remember that you might be wearing the belt over a coat or waistcoat, and take that into consideration - don’t just get the same size of belt that you use to hold your trousers up, or you might find that you’re struggling to breathe!” 

Of course, there are those who would ask “What’s wrong with a pocketful?”. To that I reply with a question of my own: “You’re going to be yomping over rugged terrain: are you sure you want to wearing a coat?”

Carrying cartridges for modest driven shoot days

According to the Game Shooting Census the average bag on a driven day is around 120 birds, which divided by 8 guns over 5 drives works out at about 3 birds per drive per gun. On this kind of day, you’re unlikely to be getting through large numbers of shells, but you may find that speed of reloading is paramount, especially if there’s a big flush of partridges early on in the drive, or of pheasants as the beaters approach the end of the cover. That said, for most guns, reloading from a pocket, which can be replenished from one’s cartridge bag is a perfectly adequate solution. It is worth noting that if you plan to do so it’s important that your gloved hand can go in and out of said pocket with ease. 

Alternatives to loading from the pocket

Speaking for myself, I don’t really get on with loading from my pocket. Despite people’s protestations that “all you need to do is give the pocket a shake” I still find that half the time I end up with one of the cartridges the wrong way up, usually at a critical moment, and I lose vital seconds fumbling around. Shooting earlier in the season, loading from a pocket is a challenge if one isn’t wearing one’s shooting coat, and therefore doesn’t have a pocket, and I have sometimes felt that a pocketful of cartridges can be a bit… well… flappy?

Cartridge pouches

These are leather panniers that combine a cartridge belt with a pocket, in that they are pockets that attach to a belt. Being attached to the belt means that they don’t bounce around quite as much, but they don’t present a solution to the cartridge-the-wrong-way-up issue.

Speed loaders

Personally, the solution that I found was a product called a Monkey Loader, a kind of tube-like bandolier situation that goes over the shoulder and at the push of a button delivers two cartridges into your waiting hand, brass first. Sadly these products are no longer on the market, but there is an alternative… two, in fact.

The first is a product called a Gannochy, which is a sort of box arrangement that sits on a shoulder strap. Within the box are the little clips that are also found on some cartridge belts. These hold the cartridges with the brass pointing out, allowing the shooter to simply pull out the required number of shells, confident that they will always be the right way ‘round. “We make these in two sizes, 50 or 100,” says Ash. “They are really designed with loaders in mind, but the the 50 is would be suitable to carry for yourself although you might need to accompany its use with a bag for larger, busier drives”.

RHS: a belt-mounted Gannochy for 50 cartridges. LHS: a loadmaster for 44 cartridges

Another solution would be the Loadmaster. These are a lighter-weight alternative for use as a single gun (44 cartridges when using a 12bore). The Loadmaster is a gravity-fed hopper system that delivers one or two cartridges brass-first. “The Loadmaster would serve you well on a typical shoot day, where you're alone on a peg and want to ensure you are quickly ready for the next opportunity. It is ideal when shooting a bag of up to around 100-150 depending on how well you shoot!” Ash tells me.

Reloading on bigger days

For bigger shoot days, a cartridge bag is really the best way to get your cartridges from gunbus to peg, and then whether you load from your pocket or not is a personal choice. “Our JP Northumberland loader's bags have the capacity to hold up to 250 cartridges,” says Ash, “but it is important to remember that you don’t have to fill them to the brim. I also use my cartridge bag to carry my ear defenders and a water bottle. They have quick pockets on the front which present pairs of shells brass-up for speedy loading, and they are available with broad webbing straps to help spread the weight.”

However, if you prefer not to have the bag over your shoulder, Ash suggests a loader's belt, which also feature the quick load pockets, but attached to a belt instead of the cartridge bag, making for good weight distribution and fumble-free reloading.

It goes without saying that reloading is a very personal thing, and that each person has their own method. For example, I reload using my left hand, despite nearly every other right-handed gun I know preferring to do so from their more dextrous right. I’m not even certain why I have ended up doing it this way. It will take a bit of experimentation for you to get your method nailed down, or to get used to a new system, but before long it will become second nature.