re: Upcoming ammo shortage and price increase?

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sold off my less common rifles and bought new common ones.

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It's the most sensible thing to do. As much as I hate to admit it, but now way id buy a new rifle that wasnt a 6.5 creedmoor or .223 if I planned to shoot it alot. You either shoot something backed by the hornady marketing machine, or you pay a whole lot for ammo and you better buy a whole lot when you find it.

What frustrates me is winchester has poopoo'd their catalog on some of their own cartridges. When I bought my 338 ammo was available in basically any flavor from anywhere at reasonable prices. Since people don't shoot it much, nobody makes much, and the catalog has thinned wayyyy down. The bean counters swooped in and totally redid the manufacturing allocations to make more of what people buy more of. So many hunting caliber/ammo options are limited run or discontinued now.

Russia and China have transitioned away from 7.62x39 for some time now and both countries have rifles chambered in 5.56x45, mainly for their export market.

I have a Ruger American in 7.62x39 that is an awesome rifle along with AK variants; but I encourage folks going forward to focus on NATO calibers and don’t be swayed by new fads (6.8) until it goes DoD wide with the infrastructure to support secondary market.

That was panic buying, based on cries of gun control efforts by Dems. The panic buying hit the munitions industry that at the time, was just barely keeping up with supplying the ongoing wars with OIF/OEF and civilian demand.

What we have now is a true dearth of basic components due to European NATO countries giving up their primary supplies and the US giving up large reserve supplies of munitions to the Ukraine disaster.

Also keep in mind that we supply hundreds of nation-states so the war machine keeps churning.

Good mantra is to have limited variants of weapons platforms with enough ammunition to supply your target shooting/competition/hunting needs for at least 3 years. Not always practical, but it’s what we (USA) used to base projections on for 2 theater wars…just take it as trusted info we do not practice such wisdom any longer.

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still hard to find cheapo 7.62X39 retail, here in alabama

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the days of 0.25 x39 are long gone and have been for years. I have a mini 30, an AK and two SKS’s and when I bought each one I got a case of ammo to go with it.

great round and hall of fame rifles, but as the guy above said the massive surplus ammo stocks are over and done for that round

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Remember how crazy it was in the last two Obama years? Someone would post that there was ammo at a certain Walmart, then it would be wiped out, and people would be running all over buying up everything they could find. It was completely insane. Thank goodness whatever was going on with the market then has long since stabilized. There's no apparent shortage anymore, at least at this time.

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Ah the good old days. I stocked up on ammo by the crates and pallets using the cabelas warehouse back door at wholesale thanks to this board. I haven’t bought ammo since 2013 except for some .357 and now I’ll need some .308 for my new gun.

This is why I enjoy the OB; men helping men discuss important issues. Thank you for commenting.

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TheDrunkenTigah

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sounds like a marketing ploy to increase sales.

regardless, I reload and have enough powder/primers for a while

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Same here (except I use capital letters where appropriate) and I figured yesterday I could reload approximately 80k rounds (given the three Ps that I have on hand of primers, powder and pills ... freedom pills that is) 80k rounds, which would probably take me a year if I chose to casually do-so.

I've been handloading/reloading for the better part of the past five decades.

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For whatever reason, I can't find any 308 or 7.62x51 locally for less than $1.25 per round, even for cheap plinking ammo

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