If I am black bear hunting I will top off my rifle, meaning 4+1 in the Ruger 77, or 5+1 in the 1895 Marlin. In addition I have a folding, leather cartridge wallet made by Hunter that I will carry another 8-10 rounds in. I always carry a Glock 20 that holds 16 rounds and an extra magazine for the Glock on my person. If I am whitetail hunting I will carry a backpack, inside of the backpack I will have an extra 20 rounds of rifle ammunition. I believe in carrying extra ammunition for signaling purposes if one gets lost. Yeah................I know we're not supposed to get lost but "--it happens. " I also carry three flashlights, a heallamp that gets carried in one of the cargo pockets, another Streamlight ProTac light that goes in a nyon belt case and a Streamlight MicroStream light clipped in one of my shirt pockets. Either of the two Streamlights are great because when I'm hunting they are always on my person.
When I hear this question about how many rounds does one carry I will always bring up the "George" story. This happened in the late 70s, early 80s when cell phones didn't exist. "George" was a guy from Lincoln, Rhode Island, who was hunting with a group of other hunters from New Jersey; we all were whitetail hunting in Greenville, Maine. I was hunting with my cousin, and one day while we were going out one of the guys in the New Jersey crew noticed that we were carry extra cartridges in wallet holders and decided to bust out chops. He wanted to know how many rounds the Rhode Islanders (we're from Rhode Island too) needed to kill a deer because all the New Jersey guys only needed one; and they only carried what their gun would hold. Okay.............so we all have a good laugh and go our separate ways hunting. Well that night we had a knock on our cabin door, one of the New Jersey guys asked if we'd seen George because he was considered to be lost. At that time it was dark, the weather had dropped to around 34 degrees and it was raining very hard, like sideways hard. So......everyone in camp went out looking in the area where we were hunting, however............around midnight we called it off because it was raining so hard and it was so cold we just had to come in. At daybreak the next morning it was clear and the temperature was still around 34 degrees when the search party started in again. I'd asked some of George's hunting buddies where George liked to hunt, they told me in a cedar swamp, but the last time he was seen he was heading in the opposite direction. I decided to take a walk through the cedar swamp anyways. About an hour into the swamp I yelled for George, and just as I yelled a shot went off right behind me, "I mean right behind me!!" I nearly needed a change in underwear, but......there was George!! He was laying behind a big blow-down tree, and he jumped up, ran over to me and hugged me, thanking me for finding him. He had a large gash above his eye from where it got gashed from a branch while he was trying to find his way out to the road. He said he could hear trucks going by. I asked him why he didn't shoot his gun in an effort to signal us. He said he only had the five rounds in his rifle and he'd fired four of them, saving one for the morning. At that time George ate (inhaled!!) my two Hershey bars, and......then the left over ham and bean sandwich from the day before that was inside of the game pouch in my plaid, Carter's hunting jacket; that sandwich was ugly but George didn't care.!! We got George out of the woods, and transported to the hospital where he was treated for hypothermia and got his forehead stitched up. The next time I saw George he was wearing two leather ammo pouches, carrying an extra magazine and he showed me his new flashlight.
So...........that's my George story, hope I didn't hijack this thread, wasn't my intention. Usually will carry an extra three or four boxes of ammo that I leave in the camp in case we have a scope problem. I've also loaned ammunition to other hunters who either forgot their ammo or simply didn't bring enough for their hunt.