ORIGINAL: Solitary Man
The first thing I'd do if I were you is buy a couple of reloading manuals and read up on the basic reloading procedures. Then read em' again. There are several reloading manuals available. Hodgdon, Nosler, Sierra, Speer, Lyman, and Hornady come to mind.
I was in you position, last January, the BEST advice I got was on here. One of the guys recommend this very thing, so I went out and bought 2 manuals. The first was Lymans 48th edition, because it has the best section for beginners, with detailed pictures and instructions that really helped me. Then I bought the Nosler reloading book because that was the brand of bullets i chose to reload. And lastly the kit I bought came with the Speer manual (also very good). Any time I start reloading for a new caliber, I consult all 3 for minimum/max loads, trim to lengths etc. and the 4th best tool I use is this site, these guys on here know their stuff, anytime i have a question, i ask it in here, these guys usually point me in the right direction within a day. One other question you had was will you see an improvement? Well, you have to ask yourself, "Am I reloading just to hunt"? Because many of the factory loads will give more than adequate groups to hunt with. If the 1.25-1.50 groups you get from factory loads arent sufficient then take the time to reload. I thought I would be happy with reloads that shot around an inch, until started seeing that I could get loads to group in the .50-1", now im obsessed by it, and am not happy until I achieve that with every caliber I reload. Hope this helps, and when you get started.......ask away!!
p.s. one thing I forgot, read alot of these questions in here, you will learn the guys that hang out in here, and will learn which ones to listen to and which one to not listen to
