Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Rimfire Shortages - Its Been Over 24 Months Now!

Stopped at three local shops Friday and all had at least a few different types on the shelf. Prices slightly high but not unreasonable.

I've heard from friends that our two closest Walmarts have received a decent amount every Saturday for the last month. However, it still doesn't last more than a day.

Kenoh2: We travelled over 280 miles yesterday checking numerous chain stores, sporting goods stores and gunshops in 3 Montana cities and not a single round of 22 L.R. hollow-point ammo was to be found ANYWHERE!
Bulk packs at the Helena, Montana gunshow were priced from $50.00 to $65.00 and one pawn shop had Remington 525 pack hollow-points at $80.00!
One of my travel mates did buy a Deluxe rare edition Browning lever action 22 Rifle at Bob Wards in Butte, Montana for $849.00 and was offered a CCI 100 pack of NON-hollowpoints for $12.00 or a 40 round box of American Eagle hollow-points for $5.49!
Scalper prices nearly there - of ammo that is not available to the 22 ammo shooter but only to a rimfire firearm PURCHASER!!!
Counterfolks at 3 Bears Alaska, 2 Wal-Marts, Bob Wards, Bugs n Bullets, and 2 independant sporting goods stores/gunshops in Helena just laughed at us when we asked for 22 ammo.
Some 17 HMR was seen here and there on shelves (priced HIGH!) but no 17 Mach2 ammo at all.
Locally here, NO 22 ammo has been available in many weeks and EVERY non-resident Hunter that has come into the LGS here seems to ask for 22 ammo and comments from them concur its still extremely hard to find on shelves anywhere in their travels.
Kenoh2, what part of the world are you in? I have been getting the impression that back east and some mail order outlets are getting more ammo of late?
I wish this were over.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Was at the LGS today looking for powder, did not find any.. They did however have CCI target limit 6 boxes per for $4.99 a box. As this is my High Standards favorite I got 6 boxes.

while academy sometimes has .22 rimfire, I haven't seen 17hmr or .22 magnum in maybe a year or more. never seen any of the short .17's.

it has put a kink in any kind of target shooting. just small game ammo is it's assigned use now, and to check the sights. and the choices are so thin or narrow. yeah, I'm complaining but it does no good to complain.

VarmintGuy, I'm in the NW Ohio part of the world. I know of five shops within 25 miles that have 22lr, 22WMR and 17HMR. All of them have daily limits. None have scalper prices. The last I saw 17Mach2 was about a month ago.
I will be stopping at a pawnshop on the way home tomorrow to pick up a few boxes of Hornady 17HMR @ $10/box. He has had them for at least six months.

From my what I see at shops around me, it seems the shortage is easing. Maybe we are in a better shipping route or maybe it's because Buckeyes are the chosen people.

Since this thread started I've had three opportunities to buy 500 to 1000 rounds of .22 Long Rifle hollow-points off the Internet for at most $35 a brick. Didn't because I already have enough, though would have if any had been Winchester Power Points.

Supplies didn't last more than a day at any of the websites, but they were there if anybody was checking.

MuleDeer,

Have you noticed any increase in the amount of misfires with recently purchased .22lr. Friend and I shot a bunch today with recently bought Ely target and Wolf.

We had around 20 that didn't fire out of perhaps 300 rounds. Most would fire on the second try. The ones we looked at all had good hits on the first go and the strike on the second try when they would fire looked identical.

We get in 22 every day of the week. Usually 3-5 cases. Last week we received over 300,000 rounds.....and it didn't even sell out!

22 ammo is still on allocation with the wholesalers (distributors). They're still hoarding some to tie in with stuff they have on the shelf that's not moving well. There is more out there than people realize. We upped out "limit" to two bricks per customer...

battue,

Not really. I did have a couple of misfires with some Remington .22 Short ammo recently, but only in one of several rifles I tested it in, and both rounds fired the second time I tried them.

To be honest, until I became a member of the Campfire I hardly ever even thought about rimfire misfires, because I so rarely encountered them. I don't know why that would be, because my wife and own over 15 rimfire rifles and handguns, so there's certainly a wide range of firing pins and springs.

shortactionsmoker,

I even had the owner of one store recently confess that he'd gotten in 60 cases of .22 Long Rifle ammo, but only sold 50, because he wants to hold some back for next spring's varmint shooters.

Shortactionsmoker: Your "shop's" situation is way, way, WAY more more "fortunate" than the three shops in my SW Montana town!
No American made 22 rimfires for nearly three months now!
I wonder what the difference is?
At a recent gunshow one "trader" surmised that "with the "Republican" win upcoming, that 22 ammo will once again be commonplace on store shelves"!
We'll see - I surely wouldn't bet on that premise.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

VG,

If you checked a couple of websites for rimfire ammo every time you logged onto the Campfire, you'd find a more than during all your driving around. Though I have seen quite a bit on store shelves during the past month or two in my part of Montana during the past couple of months.

I suspect that even if there bug Republican gains in the election (and I bet there will be), shooters will still be buying "affordable" rimfire ammo anytime they can find it. It's gotten to be almost a knee-jerk reaction by now.

I have been able to put in what I think I will need for the rest of my life, Im 60 now... I have 2 bricks (Eley) of sub sonic HP's for tree rats and many 100's rounds of Wolf and S&K for target shooting. My 52's love the stuff. As a boy I could count on yellow bricks of Winchester super X HP's under Christmas tree. My GrandDad kept telling me to use shorts on the river tree rats, its all about the noise and dead is dead. I use subsonics now... Its the sticker shock that has me bumfuzzled.... I got by on fed Automatch as a good all round bulk,plink ammo, 14 bucks for 325 rounds at wally world, that is no more, they never have it and the prices on internet sent me to the pringles cans of 500 S&K... very best WinPoor

I picked up a 325 of Auto Match on the Internet maybe a month ago for $15 from one of the Internet sites that got a shipment. As noted above, you just have to keep checking, but it's lot cheaper to check the Internet than drive around to gun stores.

You sure burn alot of gas.......



(It's on the shelf for sale at the 2 stores I happened to be in on Sunday)
CCI even has some in the company store again.


Good Luck

I haven't seen a .22 shell for sale around here in six months. Oh ya, you can find them at the gun shows at a premium price.

Plenty online this morning. Anywhere from $.06 per round all the way up to $.40 per round. Been buying a bit when I find it at "good prices" in preparation of gifting my grandson a 22 rifle for christmas.
Was planning on a Ruger 10/22 but think a bolt action makes more sense these days for a young man. Will slow down ammo usage at least.

For the past year the only time I've bought "standard grade" .22 Long Rifle was when the brick price was $35 or less, and the only reason I paid that much was the panic wasn't fading a year after the election, thanks to so many people buying every box they found at any price. (Of course, I've paid for than that for target ammo, but still rarely pay much more than $60, the "gun show gouger" price for ordinary stuff.)

One thing I'm wondering is how many shooters who haven't seen .22 Long Rifle on store shelves have asked the people in the store if they have any. I know for a fact that some keep a supply in the back, so every panicker doesn't automatically grab it off the shelves whenever they find it out. As noted earlier, one local store has 10 cases of hollow-point ammo in back, but only for regular customers who haven't been grabbing everything they find out.

Although the rimfire ammo shortage seems to be abating, the tinfoil shortage seems to be holding.

Shooters created this shortage by allowing themselves to panic like a bunch of sheep. This has been a self inflicted and completely avoidable situation.

A buddy bought them at Black Sheep last Saturday.....in your town.