Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire It's an ill wind & the rimfire shortage...

I've had good luck with the Federal AutoMatch 325 packs. Have picked up several for under $20. Any serious shooting and the .17HMR goes - whole other ballgame than the .22lr's.

Golly, gee-whiz - I never ran low on .22 during the caused-by-ourselves shelf shortage. I might have to pound my chest and change my top signature line! As to Remington Golden .22s, I always found them to be sort of a Russian Roulette in Reverse deal as you never knew if they would fire when you pulled the trigger.

I was low when the craziness started. I bought one brick (all that was on the shelf the day before Obama was elected) and that put me at about 1,500 rounds. Who knew it would last for 8 friggin years?!!!

A generous campfire member sent me two bricks so my boys could keep shooting, and for that I'm grateful. If I saw a brick for under $35, I bought it. I never got up to over 3,000 rounds. Fired everything from old Winchester, to Thunderbolt. I found American Eagle to be decent. I also found out that my Ruger MKII will shoot anything. Talk about a reliable pistol.

some years ago i ran across a case of remington green box ammo from the 60's.
one day i had a kid shooting a .22lr revolver out on the desert with some new ammo.
i took a box of that old 60's ammo out and let him shoot it. He commented is that magnum ammo?
no, it's just the way it use to be made.
My first negative exerience with some of the new stuff, brand i don't remember, i was shooting at 100yards
and bullets were hitting the dirt at about 70.

You all need to try and shoot some Junior 22 LR, after that, anything else you shoot will be great ! I still have about 20 boxes of it from about 15 years ago that I just can't figure out what to do with it.

The Remington is FILTHY and I'm not one to complain about dirty ammo. Just handling it coats your hands with a 'golden' residue that positively glitters in the sun. I grabbed a brick of thunderbolt during the shortage that leaded the barrel so bad I had to force a rod through the bore and came out with large slivers of lead. Never again for thunderbolt. I am working my way through the crap I got during the shortages (sill have a bunch of cheap Winchester). CCI has always been good and Federal is usually good as well.

I had some of that krapp, it was absolutely worthless. I tried to shoot some of it but gave it up as a bad job after half a box or so. I think mine was more like 20 years ago, found five boxes of it in the back of my ammo locker a while back and threw it away. Being as old as it is now and as bad as it was to start with, I would never consider putting it in any gun of mine.

I have never been able to run a full mag of them through my Browning Buckmark. EVER! And like you gentlemen, some of them sure sound different than others!

I let the kids burn them up in their bolt action 22's. We won't use them in the 10/22's or the buckmarks.

Just checked my stash. Looks like the only Remington .22 rim fire I've got are three 50rd boxes of Subsonic HP. IIRC, they were the first and so far the only Rem. rim fire I've bought since the shortage began. All the rest have been either CCI, (Stingers, Mini-Mag, Std.Vel., Quiets) Federal or Winchester, pretty much all bought at Walmart over time, a few at a time. Picked up a couple more boxes of CCI standard Velocity last week at Walmart.

Will never know just how much I had before the shortages hit. But between myself, the kids, and the grandkids we shot up around 2,000 rounds saturday and sunday. It didn't make a dent and I'm back to buying a few rounds every week...

I know a few years back I came across 8,000 rounds of cci mini mags that I had forgotten for at least 15 years.

My main use of the 22 is on fox squirrels in my orchard. I shot 8 in short order but now I haven't seen any in weeks. There are plenty around but they have to hike quite a ways across open ground to get to my orchard.

Never ran out but I spent 3 yrs trying to find what I usually shoot. Had to substitute for a while. Thankfully things are a lot better now, they have us over a barrel when it comes to 22 ammo. Can't duplicate it or reload it, when it's not available it's just gone.

I've favored the CCI mini mag HP for most of my shooting for decades now. And they have always put out good quality ammo. Told this before, but a while back I was cleaning a seldom seen corner of my garage and found a green plastic tote with some assorted shooting stuff and 80 unopened boxes of cci mini mags in the bottom. IIRC this would have been 2013, and this tote had sat on the floor of my unheated garage since we moved here in 1995. Temps over those years ranged from -32 to 108f.
I shot this stuff up over the following months and never had a misfire. It seemed as accurate as newer production stuff.

I bought a bucket of remingtons new and improved golden bullet 2 summers ago. It's ok for plinking and for the price I paid I have no major complaint. 35 years ago this was my preferred ammo. NO MO...

as far as I am concerned, there is still a shortage. When you can' walk into any retail outlet that sells guns and ammo, and select from a variety of brands, specs and packaging, there is a shortage. I don't think I ever dropped below 20K+ rounds in the locker, not being able to buy at will was still was a pain.

I was thinkin' 'bout shortages
when thinkin' 'bout shortages wasn't cool.......

Vinny

P.S. and not just in rimfire................:)

there never was a "rimfire ammo shortage" here.
there were a lot of gougers buying it up everyday
and selling it at greatly inflated prices online and
at the shows. of course, they wouldn't have been
able to pull it off if the folks that bought that grossly
inflated priced ammo hadn't paid that high price for
what should be cheap bargain promo ammo.
i witnessed those gougers buying up the ammo and
had posted that fact on several sites, but folks just
couldn't believe that would be true and i often got
flamed over it. oh well. . . .

My closet has more .22 rimfire now than ever before in my life. Could use a little more. ;-{>8

I'm still pissed beyond believe over the .22LR situation. Yeah I do find some on shelves from time to time, but prices are still pretty rough if you ask me. 10c a round is still just WAY too much for .22lr...the ammo companies are just making a killing.

And the ammo companies still haven't risen to meet demand. I get that it doesn't make sense to build a new factory to meet fluctuations in the marketplace, but 6 years isn't a fluctuation; it's the new normal. They are straight up failing us and no one seems to give a chit.

I need some more 22's. You can't have enough.