Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Shortage challenges and reloading as a hobby

Yep. Been seeing more of it and it's staying in stock for more than 10 minutes too. That is a good thing.
I never stopped "pulling the handle, but did change some things and tried new things to keep going. I tried some Ramshot powders, as it seemed like they were always around and may have saved me a few times. Prices of those powders were never really high, as compared to some of the others. Hovering around $28-$32.00/pound. Luckily last year I found 6 pounds of Hunter, 6 pounds of Big Game, 10 pounds of X-, 10 pounds of TAC at a local shop. An archery shop of all places!! It was $30/pound and I gladly paid the piper. Now I am hooked on some of that powder. It works great in my rifles, so there is a silver lining there. For my 6.5's, I did like you and gave up on Sierra. They were nonexistent, so f them.. Hornady was pretty available, but there was some stretch of time where you couldn't find the 140gr ELD match bullets. The 140gr BTHP match was available and at a good price:

(this was 3 months ago at a store I found about 5 months ago^^^^)

.....but I went to Barnes and tried some of their match burners. I'm still on the fence with them, as they do not shoot as well in my rifles as the ELD match. But the prices were very good on them, so I bought quite a few of them. If nothing else I'll shoot them in my iron sight m96 6.5x55. I was getting to a point in my powder supply where I had to conserve what I had. H4350 and AR Comp were the 2 main powders that I had to watch my use on because those are my favorites and they were very hard to find for a while. Luckily I found 6 pounds of H4350 and bought it at $47/pound a few months ago. I lucked into 10 pounds of AR Comp at the beginning of the year. That was a god send and I have already used 5 pounds of it. That was $37/pound, but worth it. Yesterday I was at the very small LGS and this is what I saw:


So this thread reminds me, I need to run down there and buy a few pounds of RL23 to try out. Heard it was pretty good. I also saw RL15.5 for the first time. I shake my head with that one. Its good to be stocked up, but that is difficult if you keep shooting it up..

While I have around 10,000 LR primers and can keep going for quite a while, what I have an obscene amount of are LP primers. For the little .45 shooting I do, I thought I was waaaaay overstocked. And then I figured they work just fine in medium capacity rifle cartridges also- with reduced cast bullet loads which is the bulk of what I shoot anymore anyway. I can now truly tell the components makers to take a hike. I have way plenty jacketed stuff on the shelf for my .22, 6.5, and .30 shooting/hunting that I do. What has me getting a little edgy are SP and SR primers, and lead. The half ton of lead that I gloated over a couple years ago isn't so much now. But lead can still be found dirt cheap with a little ingenuity.