Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters No Ammo......NO SALE

JB & others,
I fail to grasp why anyone would want buy a new gun during this ammo famine. Yes, it is occurring but not in my neck of the woods. Being on the fringe of Virginia's larger cities has taught me and others that we do not have any resources beyond ourselves. Further, even though the big city gun shops have rack upon rack of new guns for sale, their rural customer base that constitutes a significant portion of their sales, are sitting on their wallets. So I pose this question to you and the others. How many people here have bought guns for which they have little or no ammo for and why did they buy it? I would think that no ammo availability would create an insurmountable obsticle to the industry as a whole. What do you think about this? Just curious.

Flower Child

Reloaders often have a thousand or more cases in each of several calibers, plus a large quantity of bullets of a given caliber, plus primers and powder. The ammo shortage does not affect them in the near term.

It is important to buy any guns you can that you think you want/need, there are new registration schemes/bans etc that may impact anything you buy in the future, I'm quite sure that all guns will have their signatures recorded as they already do in some states for instance, although ammo is not available now a lot of people have reloading components/ammo already in stock, and I expect that ammo will become available this summer again

I bought a M88 in .284 WIN from a friend on 31 DEC 08, well after the ammo and component shortage had begun. On Jan 1st or 2nd I ordered RCBS dies and 100 WIN cases from Midway, had them in 7-8 days. I started looking at gunshops as I traveled around eastern NC, found one box of Win Super-X ammo at a shop in Goldsboro for $22.00 (I bought it). Then about three weeks later I bought six boxes of WIN Super-X ammo at a gunshop in Fayetteville for $27.00 a box, then a week later found one more box for $33.00 in Jacksonville (and bought it too). A couple of weeks later I ordered another 100 cases and two hundred Speer 145 grain Hot Core bullets from Graf and Sons, got them in two weeks. As I travel around I stop and browse gunshops, found another 100 of the Speer bullets last week for $10.00 (old box, but still factory sealed) in a pawnshop in Benson - there is lots of stuff sitting around if you go look for it. The .284 WIN is not really a common caliber around eastern NC, but it wasn't much trouble to find all I needed to shoot, experiment with some handloads, and shoot some more - I plan to shoot some whitetail with it in the fall. I would buy another firearm in another "semi-hard to find" cartridge tomorrow (.358 WIN, .35 Whelen, .264 WIN MAG, etc.) if it struck my interest - the scrounging is part of the fun.

Given a gun I really wanted, I think I could come up with cases to reform, and bullets of some sort. The price of new stuff is a turnoff right now. As for a .284 (or whatever unusual caliber), you may do better with it than something common. Probably half the population of shooters has a 30-06, 30-30, or something similar, so would buy any ammo found. The .284 case is odd, so you can't even make it into much of anything else. (please don't tell me you can make a 6mm-.284, I know that, but you can't do like I can and make 25-06 from 30-06 or .270.) AND. an 88 is on my want list, so any of them that came up when I had money would be mine, ammo be damned.

Okay Guys,
I will get right to the point of this whole thing from my perspective. Before Winchester went under I bought a 1885 in .270 WSM. It's a really nice rifle and shoots well with the Winchester ammo. BUT...... Now there just ain't any ammo for it at all and even if there was.... it is $2.00 - $3.00 a shot and good luck finding any reloading components for it with the rest of you guys buying, making, or trading everything in sight. I thought it would be a really nice fun rifle for an ol' fart like me BUT...... it has turned into the biggest, most expensive, pain in the a$$ that I have ever owned and I am dmn sorry I bought the dmn thing. It wasn't cheap.... the company went under.... and it is in a proprietary caliber that was just introduced a while ago. I can tell you that even though I reload, this rifle will not see much, if any, use at all given the current ammo climate etc.... Frankly, I feel like I and most of the rural gun buying public around here have been screwed royally and to make matters even worse....now we have all the city slickers cruising our local hardware stores and gun shops buying up everything in sight. The whole situation ain't fair and just plain sucks. The way I am feeling now I'll be damned if I will ever buy a new gun again and I really think a lot of us old timers are feeling this way about all the new modern proprietary calibers being forced upon us. Especially since the ammo makers cannot even keep up with the demand for the stuff we already have. It seems our sport / industry is diversifying themselves to death and because of this there aren't enough production lines to even fill the current demand, much less any new demand. So why are you guys even buying the new stuff at all? From my perspective it is going to be NO AMMO.... NO SALE and the gun industry, writers, and manufacturers can all take a big leap off a tall cliff because ya can't make a living selling products that DON'T EXIST to this consumer. Enuff said.

Flower Child

Also, I think especially in these times, if you do buy another gun, as some suggest you should carefully consider what components are available for it, and if it is an unusual caliber can you resize brass from other calibers if neccessary,
consider buying at least 1 bullet mold (preferably 3) for each caliber of gun you own, have bullet making capability at least for a few basic rifle/pistol combinations

Flower Child - I firmly believe that every man has a right to his own view point and I respect yours - and I don't know just how rural you are. But I will tell you I live in a rural to average town size area (eastern NC) and hunting ammo is out there; in small countryside shops, in the small town shops, and in the average size town shops (towns of 30,000 to 65,000 people). One of my hunting pardners has a .270 WSM - he has bought ammo at Neuse Sport Shop in Kinston and at Wal Mart in Kinston recently - I agree it ain't cheap but it is there. He lives in a rural town so small it is just a crossroads - he is 18 miles to Kinston and 35 miles to Jacksonville - he can buy ammo. Get in your car and go look - the hunting ammo is there. Sorry it is so painful for you, it is a PIA for everyone involved, but it is not insurmountable. Good luck in your quest.

You're on a computer and you're crying about no ammo?

http://www.midwayusa.com/browse/BrowseProducts.aspx?pageNum=1&tabId=3&categoryId=9298&categoryString=653***690***

http://www.midwayusa.com/browse/BrowseProducts.aspx?pageNum=1&tabId=1&categoryId=7278&categoryString=9315***652***19785***9016***

What was the problem again?

plus 1

If you look, you can always find ammo.

If you reload, great. If you don't, start.

Seems every month or two either daveh or me are ordering something, and the other guy jumps in and adds another 200-500 bullets or primers for "just in case."

Been doing it for years. Ammo shortage? Not at my place.

funny you should mention that.

I watched a sale go south in the Gander Mountain store in Ocala FL this past week.
Guy was ready to spring for a new S&W .357, but when he found he could not buy ammo for it at the store, he changed his mind and walked.

Getting started with reloading now, is just another exercise in frustration.
Primers, powder, bullets..............almost non existent.

Prices are through the roof as well. I'd advise to not start with that, or with a new caliber (if you use factory loads) until all this crap calms down.

Just bought two boxes of bullets at Carter's Country in Houston at 2001 prices. It will get better eventually.

Rancho Loco,
THANK YOU SIR!!!! I just ordered 500 of the dang brass, a new set of dies, and 1000 Hornady 130gr Interlock bullets. I also scored on 8 lbs of H4831 at a place called Natchez. Primers look to be in even shorter supply than loaded ammo but I already have that taken care of cuz I bought a boat load back when that Bstrd Clinton was in office. Thanks for the help. I reckon the days of going to our hardware store for ammo are over with.

As for the computer, I jerked around with Mainframes and VTAM networks for years before retiring but as of late I ain't been any too anxious to play with this thing all that much. Maybe I need to pay more attention to this thing since y'all solved my headache fer me right quickly. Now all I got to do is explain to my very frugal Missus why I spent all of this KA-Ching. Don't worry, we have it but she acts as though we are eventually going to be taxed out of our home by the county and our health care insurance.

Flower Child

I think things are going to improve real soon. The people that ran out and bought up everything they could find are firearmed and ammo`ed out and the stocks on the shelves are starting to build. I saw this posted at the Classic Arms web site today.


Hopefully this is the start, and all the hoarders/scalpers are going to start seeing the value of their stocks dropping soon......

Actually, she might be right!

Gotta agree there..Componets are rather scarce everywhere I look.