That’s interesting.Old days of shooting I would include the cost of a new barrel for one gun at least. Reloading/Handloading will reduce your cost per round on the bigger stuff but even on the little .223 you can get your cost down to .40 cents per round by buying right. The 6's are a bit more in the .50 to .80 per round, not counting brass. As for dog towns we would never shoot more than one day at them and we started our shooting at 350 yards out to 800 yards to keep them unaware of us shooting at them. If you got close they would hide and few would show themselves. So the farther away they were more shooting for you, which added to more accurate rifles and ammo.
We would start at 25 to 50, and work our way out to 200-250 and then move on.
We might try your way next summer…