Sunday, April 19, 2009

WTF, over?

Man, I have not burned this much powder in three days since my weekend at Blackwater. The only thing that made that happen is having a bunch of .22 trainers, and the fact that I normally go to the range lugging an ammo can brim lippin' full of .22LR rounds along with whatever centerfire I'm planning on shooting.

Except have you tried looking for cheap bulk rimfire ammo these days? Holy cow. Where is it all?

I've shot up probably a thousand rounds or more of my stash in only 72 hours, and that is going to be an absolute bear to replace.

I used to be fairly obsessive-compulsive in my .22 ammo sorting. The only thing that went in the ammo can was plated high-velocity stuff; I generally avoided unplated bullets, but now they get dumped in there, too. The only things that get kept separate now are my stash of Federal Gold Medal and Wolf Target Match, and specialty bullets like Super Colibris and SuperSniper Subsonic. The few rounds of Mini Mags I had left just got dumped into the can. This is just crazy.

25 comments:

fast richard said...

I hope prices come down a bit when the supply crunch eases up. Supplies won't stay scarce forever, will they?

The Raving Prophet said...

There's only two kinds of ammo I have found in any real supply: hunting rifle ammo (as in actual game loads, not FMJ practice) and shotgun ammo. All handgun ammo is nonexistent, as is any kind of rifle ammo that is inexpensive enough to shoot for fun. If you find such things, they're either at dedicated gun stores for even higher prices than we saw last fall or they're the last two boxes at Wal-Mart.

I really have to wonder who is buying all this stuff and when those people will run out of money or storage room.

Ed Foster said...

Copper and lead are both down about 50% to 75% from what they were 2 or 3 years ago. Need was up, but I suspect there was some panic hoarding involved too. Lets hope.

In the mean time, everybody and his cousin Joe has been building ammo machinery, so I imagine the downside of the curve should provide some comparatively cheap ammo before the losers get shaken out of the game.

Tam said...

"...or they're the last two boxes at Wal-Mart."

The current ammo situation has really exposed the weakness of WalMart's Just-In-Time restocking if you're using them as your primary ammo supplier.

The typical WallyWorld's inventory levels are set up to account for a couple of people coming in and buying 100rd packs of WWB 9mm on their way to the range, not active shootists coming in and buying by the case lot. I'd be surprised if the typical Super WalMart's weekly ammunition order was half of what we got every Thursday at CCA.

BryanP said...

It sucks, yeah. I just did a complete ammo stash inventory yesterday. I'm down to 1500ish rounds of .22lr, and 1000 of that is unplated. It's sad. I don't want to shoot because I don't want to deplete my stash. *sigh*

Terry said...

If anyone is going to Joe's Boomershoot this weekend, stop at the Black Sheep in Lewiston or Coeur d'Alene. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Ritchie said...

Here in the Denver area, Sportsmans Warehouse (the surviving ones) is selling CCI Standard Vel Target for $7.00/100 and there's not much price advantage if any,to buying regular trade or promo grade.

Les said...

I heard that Remington had huge lot of BAD ammunition due to bad priming compound. I'm hunting for a thread...

I did get 5000 rounds of CCI MiniMags at my local shop - took him ~month to get it.

Captcha is "Phyte" - that is either a new rap group what orchids say when they 'bout to beat yo' ass...

Les Jones said...

Wal-Mart was out of bulk .22LR the last time I was there, too. I buy what they've got, which sometimes is just shotgun shells. I never see 100 round WWB value packs any more.

On the other hand the CCI Blazer Brass 9mm at $9/50 is a deal.

Anonymous said...

Finally started seeing Federal bulk packs on the shelves here for $20/box. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a horrible price. But when I paid $13/box not that many months ago, It makes me want to wait for it to go on sale before I buy it....

Caleb said...

I am feeling your pain, albeit to a higher degree. In the past three days I have burned up over 500 rounds of ammo...but it's all been centerfire stuff. But hey, gotta practice for Bianchi Cup.

Firehand said...

While back, at the last big gun show here, I bought something I'd never thought I would: a 5k-round case of .22lr. One dealer had several of the Centurion, and several of Winchester; the Centurion cost around half as much, so...

Right now, I'm half-wishing I'd bought two.

TJP said...

I don't have much .22 on hand. Well, I do, but who knows where the hell I put it. Every once in a while I find a rimfire in my washing machine tub, or at the bottom of a box full of random stuff.

I suppose I could just shoot my remaining brick, but wouldn't it make more sense to sell it at a high price out of the back of a white van?


wv = "protomb"; I'm pro-tomb but anti-urn.

Anonymous said...

impossable to find bulk 22 ammo here in atlanta! NO one has any! Glad i always keep ten bricks on hand.

Jayson said...

um, anonymous, it's called Georgia Arms, and it's in Villa Rica.

OrangeNeckInNY said...

I've still got about 4800 rounds of CCI Subsonic .22LR ammo left, along with several 500 round bricks of standard & hyper velocity stuff. Got the 5000 rounds of the subsonic stuff from MidwayUSA for about $200 back in October. I just checked their inventory again and that damned stuff increased in price 1.5x in 6 months. And it says "Out Of Stock. No Backorder." Glad I got them when I did.

T.Stahl said...

Yesterday I screwed my gun-locker and ammo-box to the wall. When I put my guns and ammo back in, I took an inventory to update my Excel-sheet. 8506 rounds in stock, only .223 is critically low (meaning, not enough left to fill all mags).

At my friendly arms dealer .22lr CCI SV is €399/10,000, 9x19 starts at €149/1,000.

Noah D said...

"I hope prices come down a bit when the supply crunch eases up. Supplies won't stay scarce forever, will they?"

From your lips to God's ears.

I saw a few blips in the constant upward trend in .223 over at arfcom's ammo price tracking when I could bear to look a few months ago, but it was still all rising. I'll join you in your plea, though.

Has it been long enough for any new production capacity to come online? Is any new production capacity being created? I don't think any ammo manufacturer has mentioned adding more - but I haven't been following that closely.

Tam said...

"Has it been long enough for any new production capacity to come online? Is any new production capacity being created?"

With Barack Obama in the White House and the Democrats controlling Congress, would you loan someone money to build an ammunition factory?

Jay G said...

It's gotten so bad that I've ramped up to 2 boxes of bulk .22 ammo every time I set foot in the giant box store 'o' doom.

Especially when I'm burning through an entire box in one session with a new shooter... ;)

Weekends full of shooty goodness RAWK. Giant pile 'o' dirty guns notwithstanding...

T.Stahl said...

When I got my Glock in 2000, Geco 124gr FMJ 9mm was DM300* per 1,000, DM270 when it was on special offer. Today 1,000rds cost €159 or the equivalent of DM311. Either there was some other reason for ammo prices already being high in Germany in the early 2000s or there hasn't been a real price increase over the last years.

As for prices of stuff that's made from finite resources (e.g. ammo, diesel) falling: I never thought that diesel would fall below €1/L again, after rising to €1.45/L and above last summer. Yet last week I filled up for €0.98/L.

*) DM = Deutsche Mark

Anonymous said...

Jay, where are you getting the bulk .22lr?

It cannot be had in Central Indiana for love or money (believe I've tried both).

Shootin' Buddy

Jay G said...

Shootin' Buddy,

Southern NH, sorry...

Anonymous said...

Crap, I was in Southern NH saturday, didn't think to look.

Assrot said...

I finally caught the rerun of you at Blackwater. I'm sure you enjoyed it as any decent gun loving person would.

I just don't see the point of inviting a bunch of well known gun bloggers, putting the show on TV and then showing exactly 3 seconds of my favorite gun blogger twice during the whole damn show and not bothering to introduce any of the bloggers.

Pissed me off.

Joe