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

I always need something or other from ammo/reloading supply sites, so when the right rimfire ammo is for sale I order a couple of the other items, which reduces the shipping costs per item, since they can all go into the same package. As an example, I found some Federal Auto Match on-line at $15 for 325 a month ago, and needed a couple of other small items from the same company (an RCBS bullet-puller collet and a new dial caliper), and the total shipping came to $7. Which means the shipping for the ammo was around $3, less than a gallon of gasoline.

The mail-order companies didn't sell a lot of lower-priced .22 ammo before the Obama panic, because so much was available in stores. Instead they mostly dealt in match .22 ammo, which stores don't sell much. But after the panic started, shooters started looking for rimfire ammo wherever they could find it, and the mail-order companies started moving enough to make it worthwhile to order bigger batches of the lower-priced stuff.

Now and then a small LGS near me has Auto Match. Last box cost me $18, which is about what Wally wanted for it back in the golden days of plenty. The more-or-less box stock 1022 I use for our club's winter indoor CMP shoots, dotes on that stuff.

Ammoman merely wanted about $85 for it the last time I checked while doing the online rounds.

A shop near my hunting camp had those Federal "tuna cans", 325 rounds of 36gr ammo, for $22 last week. Heard of 'em, first I had seen one. Probably not a bad idea for long term storage, ammo sealed in a can.

Surprised the preppers haven't gathered them all up by now? :O)

Our local Walmart had some 225 packs of Remsky Golden Bullets a few weeks ago. One customer was irate over the one box limit instead of the posted three box limit, because the clerk deemed that did not apply to any bulk packs.

First 22LR I've seen there in months, but for some Stingers.

With the Internet dealers pay attention to the price. They are not always close to the same. A friend picked me up 5000 ely target from a local guy he knows. I saw some on the net for close to the same price. I also saw one that was almost twice as much.

Prices are all over the place for 22 ammo. Some local shops have bumped up the price whenever they get any in, some haven't. Perhaps my timing is bad, but I haven't found anything online at a price that I'd pay for it.

Last year I found Auto Match from $30 to $70 around here, for example. Some of the highest prices were at gun shows, although one small shop had it for $30. As noted, the last box I got from a local shop was $18, so he gets more of my business these days. Since then I bought some rifle powder and a few other things from him.

The only ammo I'm really looking for at the moment, is CCI SV. Last few times I found some, they wanted $40 or more per brick.

Midway has had CCI SV off and on, for under $30 a brick, but it tends to go out the door quickly. I ordered one a couple weeks ago along with some other stuff I needed, to (again) spread the shipping costs around. Otherwise the brick would have cost around $40.

I still check local stores and have picked up some ammo here and there, but only when it's a reasonable price and I actually need it. Even found some .22 Magnum 40-grain Winchester hollow-points at Wal-Mart a couple months ago, at under $11 a box.

Bought a pile of .17 Mach 2 and .17 HMR locally last spring, all at around $6 a box for M2 and $12 for HMR, but both primarily sell in the West for spring and early summer varmint shooting, so they're typically produced seasonally. Otherwise the same machines are running either .22 LR or .22 magnum. There hasn't been much of either around since, so if anybody wants some .17's for tree squirrels in the fall they should pick it up early.

But mostly I buy off the Internet, because that's where most rimfire ammo is sold these days. You have to keep checking to find reasonable deals, but checking the net is a lot cheaper than driving around to every store within 100 miles. I only check local stores when nearby for some other reason, and refuse to pay panic prices, and my wife and I haven't had to cut back on shooting any of our 16 rimfires.

Other than looking at online sources all that often, pretty much my MO when looking for 22 ammo.

When I need something, or happen to be in the neighborhood of any sources (small shops, Bass Pro, etc), I pop in to see what they have.

Any trip to Walmart means a trudge back to the sporting goods section to see what is in the ammo case and we're usually at Wally's every few weeks for something. I did buy a 225 pack of those Golden Bullets that I mentioned.

Next time someone shows up at our club range with a kid and hardly any 22 ammo, it's theirs.

Walmart is the only dang place around here that stocks the brand of summer windshield washer bug juice that I use lots of in my truck, so that's my ofeeshul excuse for being there.

That and our favorite cheese at a buck a pound cheaper than our local grocery.

Since the "shortage" started, every time I'm in a store that carries ammo, Walmart, Meijers, Dunhams, Cabelas, Gander Mt, hardwares, etc., I check for .22 LR ammo. I've not found one box on the shelves. My LGS has managed to always keep some in stock, first by buying loose bulk & selling 50 rnd baggies for $5.50, limit one per range visit. They now have some limited varieties of factory packed ammo but are charging scalper prices, $5-$10 per 50. Because they can. I don't shoot my .22s as much or as often as I did before the shortage. According to the range master at my counties largest range, neither is anyone else. I've read all the reasons/excuses and done the math that backs it up, but two years? It's just not making sense to me any more.

So have you changed the way you look for .22 ammo since the "shortage" started?

Tmitch: Your point about NOT shooting as much at a time and as often is simply a sad fact most all 22 shooters are living with (including me!).
I hope you can find some ammo soon.
My VarmintGrandKids (and VarmintKids) are due here next spring and they like to plink at the orange and black clay pigeons.
At least I have plenty of clay pigeons on hand.
Again sorry about you striking out on the 22 ammo so often.
Keep trying.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Have you read this report? Or maybe the NRA is part of the problem?
http://www.americanrifleman.org/blo...imfire2-text&utm_campaign=22Rimfire2

OK, Really, What�s Going on with .22 Rimfire?

By Mark Keefe (RSS)

October 01, 2014


The issues behind lack of .22 Long Rifle ammunition on the shelves of your local retailer are complex and not easily explainable. Demand currently exceeds supply. Beyond the laws of simple economics, there are side effects due to lack of said supply and high demand. The two most obvious are speculation and hoarding. If you can hit the local big box store because you have the time to wait for the ammo truck to arrive and resell $20 worth of .22 for $60 through the Valley Trader or at the next gun show, you are an opportunistic speculator. There are some other words I might use, but I will restrain myself. And if you are a guy that typically buys .22 Long Rifle 250 rounds at a time who just bought 10,000 because you could not find 250 when you wanted them, then you are a hoarder. It does not make you evil, it simply means your buying habits changed due to market or external conditions. And your changed behavior likely led others to change theirs as well.

When demand exceeds supply, feeding more product into distribution is the obvious answer. It�s just good business. But what if you can�t? That�s where we are with .22 Long Rifle.

We have been resoundingly criticized for reporting manufacturers all say they are running full out in .22 Long Rifle production (some of the kinder messages had more expletives than a Quentin Tarantino movie). The ammo makers are not making that up. It is not a conspiracy. I have been in two of the major rimfire plants in the United States since this �crisis� hit, and they are, indeed, running three shifts, full out. But there are not that many rimfire plants in the United States. There are foreign makers, too, with Mexico�s Aquila, Italy�s Fiocchi and Sweden�s Norma in particular stepping up to meet demand. Also making .22 LR are England�s Eley, Germany�s RWS and SK and Armscorp in the Philippines.

For domestic rimfire plants, ATK/Federal has one in Minnesota, there is the ATK/CCI plant is in Idaho, Remington has one in Arkansas, and Winchester has one in Oxford, Miss. The latter used to be in East Alton, Ill., but in order to remain profitable and competitive, Olin Corp. moved the plant about a decade ago. Notice those two words, �profitable� and �competitive.� One of the reasons we shoot so much .22 is that it is cheap. At least compared to center-fire ammunition. Granted, material costs (i.e., lead and copper) have increased but at around 5 to 10 cents a round in normal conditions, .22 Long Rifle is remarkably reliable and inexpensive. But it is not terribly profitable. Much like the promotional dove loads that hit every big box store in the country this time of year (remind me to pick up a case), they are designed for mass production and have low profit margins. Pricing, at least from the manufacturer, is extremely sensitive and competitive. They sell huge amounts of rimfire and dove loads, but no company�s bottom line financial success is made by these products. Loss leaders or thin margins, they may not be pork bellies, but sure seem like commodities.

If you have even seen .22 being made (and my friend Mike Bussard wrote an excellent piece on how they actually make it), you know it is a huge capital expense to set up a rimfire plant. It�s not like you can order a high-speed rimfire loading machine out of the Staples catalog and set it up in your garage. It takes time, land and, literally, a lot of dollars to establish a rimfire factory. Then you have to train the workers and ensure the safety of your workers and the area in which the plant resides. Priming rimfire cases is not something best left to amateurs. The question is, though, would it be worth it to go to the expense of, say, building a $250 million rimfire plant to make your company�s money back at a penny a round over the next 10 to 20 years? The answer, so far, has been a resounding no.

This demonstrates prudence on the part of ammo manufacturers. No one can predict how long the current bubble will last. It has more than burst on the firearms side as demand for new firearms has predictably dropped from last year�s hyper-inflated levels. A company cannot plan soundly based upon a bubble. But a company can plan based on known variables. Variables such as a substantial increase in the number of .22s sold and a change in the type of .22s being shot by their new owners. This may make a new rimfire plant worth it. Time will tell.

There are, literally, millions more .22 Long Rifle firearms owned and shot that have entered civilian hands in recent years. Based on BATF data, Sturm, Ruger alone in 2012 (the most recent year for which date is available) produced 254,991 �up to .22� pistols, in addition to 68,001 �up to .22� revolvers. Heritage in Florida made 88,778, while North American Arms trailed with a still impressive 54,511. And remember, those �up to 22� pistols made by Ruger were pretty much all semi-automatics with 10-round capacity magazines. If each new Ruger buyer purchased just 100 rounds, that is an increase in demand of 25,499,100 just for those buyers. If they bought 200 rounds, you are looking at an increase of demand of roughly 51 million rounds.

Imports are an area in which we can see how the universe of .22 rimfires has increased, and those numbers are from the Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Bureau of Census, and published every year by Shooting Industry. Take Canada for example. In 2013 alone 292,394 rimfire rifles were imported from the Great White North, which was about 30,000 more than the year before. If you are wondering why you weren�t aware of this Canadian invasion it�s because the guns come from Savage�s plant in Ontario. But it�s not just Canadians. In 2013, 29,618 rimfire rifles were imported from Italy.

The number for Germany is even more telling. In 2012, 46,942 rimfire rifles were imported, while 2013 saw that number increase to 60,795. I have news for you: There were not more than 60,000 Olympic Free rifles imported into the United States last year. Of those more than 100,000 rifles, I suspect many of them were semi-automatics that came from Walther/Umarex. We identified this trend in the December 2010 issue of American Rifleman with a story �A New Class of Rifles: The �Tactical� .22s� In it �The term 'tactical .22 rifle' is essentially an oxymoron. It�s unlikely that a single military or police force on Earth uses .22 Long Rifle arms for small-scale combat operations, at least as primary guns. Nevertheless, this burgeoning class of firearms has taken hold in recent years in the civilian market.� The author then proceeded to evaluate eight different .22s in this new category from ATI, Colt, Heckler & Koch, Mossberg, Ruger, Remington, SIG Sauer and Smith & Wesson. And two of those guns came from guess where? Umarex. In Germany. The minimum magazine capacity for any of the eight was 10 rounds, but most were�and are�20- to 25-round magazines. What that means is that when shooters take such guns to the range, they shoot more ammunition.

Let�s face it, if you have a 10- or 25-round capacity magazine, how often do you say to yourself, �I�ve only fired five so far, maybe I should unload the rest, put them back in the box and save them for later.� No. If you have a semi-automatic carbine with a 25-round capacity magazine, odds are you will shoot more rounds at the range than if you had brought a single-shot Winchester Low Wall Winder Musket. There�s nothing wrong with that. It is merely a behavior change based upon the kinds of guns consumers have been purchasing for recreational shooting. So if the million or so owners of the million or so .22s sold over the past few years each bought just one 325-round can of Federal Champion (try not to confuse it with your cashews), you are looking at a minimum increase in demand of 325 million rounds.

External factors also effect demand for ammunition. Whenever major anti-gun legislation makes headlines, people react to it. We saw it with semi-automatic rifles over the past few years (which demand has now slowed). If there is a perception�real or imagined�that one cannot purchase something, then there is increased demand. If word leaked out that the government was about to ban toilet paper, you can be rest assured, my cart would be stocked with 96 count bulk packs of my favorite rolls. The same logic applies if you tell people that toilet paper is rare and not on the shelves. At some point, ammunition demand will reach its real level, not the snow-maggedon-like �bread, milk and toilet paper� frenzy we are experiencing now. At that point, the major ammo makers will look and see if there is sufficient demand for a new rimfire plant or line. I think there will be, but we will have to wait until conditions stabilize at the new normal.

"What are external factors for 200 Alex"

Yes and no. Before the shortage I used to buy online and retail. Now it's an online game only. But I won't bow to scalping prices and I won't buy foreign stuff, so sometimes it takes a few weeks to find anything. In the interim the guns are silent and I find now, even when I've "scored" a brick, it's always on my mind to take it easy on my supply. Subsequently I shoot less.

0.10 or slightly less is pretty common in my area.

Mom and pop stores have it, guess the hoarders forget about them and head straight to wally world.

Stopped in a local sporting goods store today, and they had a bunch of CCI Mini-Mag hollow-points, along with 12-15 boxes of .17 HMR 17-grain V-Maxes and a few boxes of CCI .22 Magnums. All were for fairly normal prices, and while talking to the manager of the guns & ammo section I asked how long the Mini-Mags had been in.

"About a week," he said. "We got 50 cases and we're down to four now." The store does put a limit on how much you can buy, but people are still buying as much rimfire as possible, even though the general deer and elk season is about to start.

I am not going to quote the NRA article above, but I think it makes sense.

I've shot more .22 LR ammo since the 2008 shortage than I did in the 30 years prior to that combined. When centerfire ammo and components got scarce and expensive during the 2008 scare, I switched over to rimfire and never looked back. Since then, I have bought a few .22 LR handguns and plan to buy more. I also bought a .22 WMR rifle and started accumulating ammo and shooting it. .22 ammo is still cheap in comparison and I don't have to sit at a bench and reload, and I get to sweep up the brass and dump it in a recycle bin. No muss, no fuss. We have a new indoor range open to the public and I get to shoot during the worst part of the winter when I could not go outside to shoot. I try to go as often as possible. I figure that I never shoot less than 100 rounds per visit and probably average a couple of hundred. If I do that 3 to 5 times a month, I am running through some ammo that would have been available to the general public a few years ago.

I guess that makes me part of the "problem."

i've seen 17hmr 10:1 over 22lr on the shelves.
So I've stocked up on that. $14/50 on average.

Just dropped by another local store to see what ammo and handloading stuff they were getting in this fall. They also had some hollow-point .22 LR on the shelf, Federals. I don't need any, and didn't see anybody else buying any while there, but then again the rifle season for deer and elk starts Saturday, so most of the customers were lined up buy licenses at the next-to-last moment, so probably weren't particularly concerned about next spring's gopher ammo.

Local shop has had a good variety of 22 LR on the shelves for weeks. Limit 1 brick and two smaller boxes per day.

I recall seeing:
CCI - Minimag, Quiet, SGB
Federal 525 Bulk, Target, Match, Auto Match.
Winchester Super X, Bulk.
Aguila Pistol Match
Eley Club
...and others that I can't remember.

I don't think they ever ran out of 17HMR.

Ordered 20 boxes of Hornady 22 Mag 30 Gr. VMAX the other day from Powder Valley.....they had it in stock at a little over $10/box. I thought I had run into a gold mine, until they called and said they had imposed a 5 box limit per order. So I got 5 boxes.

As long as stupid (sorry if I offend anyone here) people are willing to pay scalpers' prices, the scalpers will continue to buy it all up and resell it for a profit. Take away their profit and they will stop. I can guarantee you that limits are not stopping creative people from buying every box on every shelf.

If demand is so high that people pay scalper prices, that is the real market price. The retailer who has a lower price is trying to preserve good will, and also has to impose quantity restrictions for the same reason in order to spread it around. In your example, I may be willing to pay more per box to get all 20 boxes in one shot than to get 5 and take the chance that I can run around and get 3 more sets of 5, or 15 times one, or 7-1/2 times 2, or some other combination to get to 20, IF I really need 20 as opposed to merely taking advantage of a perceived bargain (or gold mine). Time and gasoline are money to me. It is not my job to adjust my buying decisions so other people can get what they want at the price they want. With that said, I do not buy all that I can buy. I have passed on a lot of store ammo in the last few weeks. But, I do buy what I perceive that I need based upon my �burn rate.� As I said in an earlier post, my burn rate has gone up substantially, so I am competing in the marketplace where I was not before.