That earlier discussion caused me to reread the Mayer piece and that is why I posted the link. He makes several references to loading bullet as part of his task as shooter. Here is a start:
Part of this encouragement was of a practical nature that we runners appreciated. It consisted of ammunition, free ammunition, all you could use, all you wanted, more than you needed. All you had to do to get it was apply at any frontier army post and say you were short of ammunition, and plenty would be given you. I received thousands of rounds this way. It was in .45-70 caliber, but we broke it up, remelted the lead, and some runners used government powder. I didn't. I was a stickler for the best, and used imported English powder which I will be describing to you in a little while. I had no trouble trading my government powder for things I wanted -- tobacco, bacon, flour, and other things.
We loaded our own ammunition; had to; factory-loaded stuff cost too much, was, besides, too hard to get when you were away off on the buffalo range. After my first season I chose my powder with meticulous care. Two leading brands of American powder were Dupont and Hazard, both good enough except they burned hot, dry, and cakey in the barrels, making cleaning a more or less unsatisfactory operation.
As soon as dawn came and I could see clearly through my telescope sight, I would start in. But before I fired my first round, I would coolly estimate how many animals my skinners, usually two or three of them, could care for that day. That many cartridges, plus four or five extras, just in case, I withdrew from my belt and spread out in front of me in the grass. When they were used up, I quit.
I had just finished reloading a batch of hulls, and was thinking of going out and getting as antelope for camp meat, when I heard a low rumbling like distant thunder. As it was a clear cloudless day I knew it couldn't be thunder.
So I bought my first Sharps rifle. It was a .40-90-420, as sweet as a piece of ordnance as you would ever see. ......At first it used a 320-grain bullet, but I experimented with one a hundred grains heavier, and thereafter used the 420-grain projectile. It killed quicker. In making this change I didn't sacrifice anything in velocity, because by then I had begun to use the English powder I have told you about, and it added 10 to 30 percent efficiency to my shooting.
These Sharps used paper-patched bullets, made to my specifications, one part tin to sixteen parts lead; none of this hard-nose, steel-covered foolishness you have today. The sixteen-to-one formula gave us just enough hardness to penetrate and enough lead softness to mushroom. We didn't have much paper on the buffalo ranges, so we had to find a substitute for our patches. I used antelope buckskin, pulled and stretched real thin. It worked fine. I loaded my own cartridges, not because I liked to, because loading was a tedious job after a day in the hot sun on the range: I did it because it was cheaper. Factory ammunition cost 25 cents a round, but we could hand-load for half that, so we handloaded.