Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Ammo Shortages?

Shotshell prices hit bottom awhile back and are moving up again under inflationary pressure. Sure, you can make a case you're buying with cheaper dollars, but.....

.223/5.56 prices have increased quite a bit in the last few weeks. Not sure about cause and effect, but politics correlates.

TS has CCI-SV (my benchmark .22rf) at 7cents/pop shipped. Might still be a trace of downward motion, but if you're holding your breath till it reaches 5 cents again suspect you'll turn blue. JMO, of course.

Stocking up in times of good availability is prudent. Most of us have lived through several of these supply crunches. We've been in this last one about three years, and we're not "out". Why wouldn't a sapient put in a 5 year supply of whatever they use?

Don't understand how anyone can make moral insinuations, deciding for another what constitutes "hoarding". My guess is most here have never sold anything at profit during a crunch. If anything they've probably bailed less fortunate people out at break-even. Or at loss. Kids, especially.

I used to shoot a ton of CenterX, Tenex and SK standard +.

I don’t shoot matches for money anymore, so I’ve found I can get by with all my hunting, plinking and target needs with Norma Tac, CCI SV and Minimags.

I don’t have a rifle or pistol that won’t shoot at least one of those well.

I stocked heavily on the black box Tac when they were having big sales a while back, same with Minimags. I doubt myself or my son will run dry. Probably be smart to go ahead and do the same with SV at current prices and availability.

I couldn't remember how well the Aquila SE shot except that they were within "minute of gopher".
I just went out and did two 5 shot groups with my Tikka at 50 yards and both groups were 3/4" - not bragging good but certainly adequate for gophers.

I then did two 5 shot groups at the same target with Mini Mags and they were closer to 1/2" - not much difference for critter shooting either will work just fine.

drover

I was wondering whether rimfire ammo would become scarce when this last "shortage" started. Never noticed any difference in supply (plenty) or price (pretty much pre-Obama) at the stores in my part of Montana.

From this I concluded that most of the people caught "short" during the Obama shortage had learned their lesson, and had enough on hand to keep them shooting for quite a while.

I have enough on hand for my wife and I to keep shooting our average yearly consumption for a while....

If there's a shortage now, blame me. I'm trying to get a Savage Mark II to put 3 bullets in the same zip code and it's not happening. But I keep trying and that's why they are diverting sales to my area.

John, if it does, I’m ready for it, and if worse comes to worse, I have enough Hornet stuff to carry me through; lots of cheap bullets in the 40-46gr range.

I also just jumped back into the .22 mag with a vengeance, an AR upper and a S&W pistol. The AR shoots the Federal 50gr at 1530 really well and can fill in for edible game, while the 30gr hotties should ‘splode varmints pretty well.

Yep, I was one of those people caught short-handed during the Obama shortages. Even remember scouring the internet and on this forum of how to download 223rem close to 22lr-22mag levels and learned about Titegroup and Trailboss. I'm stocked either way, lol!

Poor gunwizard. It must be traumatizing for her to read this.

….. hoarder

That's like a Savage starter pack

It's bad enough that you hoard, but to come here and "brag" about it is downright shameful.

That stuff shoots pretty well for me, and smells like Eley!

Prudent - def: acting with or showing care and thought for the future.

The Eley smell is because they Eley priming which is where the odor came from. The boxes were marked - Eley Prime.
I think they may have gone to another compound though because it has been a few years since I have seen any marked that way.

drover

Knew that, but gotta say, it sure smells like Eley…

[/quote] John, if it does, I’m ready for it, and if worse comes to worse, I have enough Hornet stuff to carry me through; lots of cheap bullets in the 40-46gr range.

I also just jumped back into the .22 mag with a vengeance, an AR upper and a S&W pistol. The AR shoots the Federal 50gr at 1530 really well and can fill in for edible game, while the 30gr hotties should ‘splode varmints pretty well.[/quote]

Same here with the .22 Magnum! In fact finally decided to shoot some of my supply this spring on gophers (Richardson's ground squirrels) because my Ruger American groups almost as well as my CZ .17 HMR.

But during the Obama rimfire shortage I also published an article about handloading various centerfire rounds to duplicate rimfire ballistics--including a cast-bullet load for the .22 Hornet. Included this info in Chapter 8 of the The Big Book of Gun Gack II, "Reduced Loads," which includes an easy, cheap cast-bullet load for the 22 Hornet, along with loads for the .17 Hornady Hornet that duplicate the .17 HMR.

The rest of my post didn’t seem to work but I posted that pic to show my buddies order did ship and arrive.

Oddly it was 100 individual boxes instead of a case of 10 bricks but 🤷🏻‍♂️

Oh, believe me, I’ve read both the magazine and book versions of that more than once!

You sent me some of your cast bullets along with some Hornet brass you sold me, but I’ve yet to futz with them, however I did come up with a good load, 9gr of H110 with the Speer 46gr FP, for hopefully turkeys and such.

In addition to prudently keeping a comfortable stash of .22LR ammo in Chez Gnoahhh I'm pretty well set up to keep shooting .22's far into the future if RF ammo disappeared overnight and if I managed to shoot up "The Stash" - bullet molds (around 20 just in .22 diameters), and an obscene supply of small pistol primers and pistol powders. Not a conscious hedge against an apocalypse, rather something I've had fun doing for nearly a half-century now anyway. My collection of .22CF rifles will continue to bark long after the shooting ranges have gone silent.

On top of that, there's the Stevens 44 .22LR sitting here for which I fitted an auxiliary centerfire breech block (newly manufactured, courtesy of Lee Shaver for around $200). That allows the use of .22LR centerfire cartridge cases which I make in my Unimat lathe. Admittedly tedious and time consuming, but what's time to a pig? A handful of brass, some primers, a bullet mold +scrap lead, and several pinches of Bullseye powder, and voila!- the old gun is back up and running if the "shortages" become permanent and rimfire ammo becomes a distant memory. (Plus the stuff shoots decidedly accurately as well.) I keep a few thousand empty primed .22LR rimfire cases gathering dust in a corner for much the same reason.

Boils down to either crying about cost/availability or doing something about it for yourself. Ain't nobody gonna do it for you. Think outside the box, if continued shooting is important to you.