It has been pretty bleak on the reloading aisle for the last several years. The necessary bits and pieces for building ammunition have been missing. There’s been rumors about how somewhere else in the country they have shelves full and no limits on how much you can buy. The interesting thing about the rumors I have heard is that in fairly short order I’ll talk to someone else from the same area and they say they can’t find anything either.
But recently, as the factory loaded ammunition has gotten easier to find and calibers that hadn’t been on the shelf have started to show up and stay for more than a minute or two, the reloading aisle is getting back to having actual reloading components on the shelves.
We are not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot, but as I write this we have some pistol primers and some small rifle primers on the shelf. There were, for a short time, large rifle primers. And they will show up again. Brass is still tough. I expect it to get better as the loaded ammo gets closer to normal. There are even a few cans of powder and a fair selection of projectiles. Even though there are still holes, it is looking far better than it did last year.
I want to take a second and draw attention to one of the reloading companies that has really done right by us as things have been hard. Hornady has been getting at least something sent to put on the shelves. They have done a great job of supporting the new PRC cartridges that they have been developing. Several times when everything was scarce and hard to come by, Hornady would ship out cases of the PRC ammo. Recently with the arrival of 7mm PRC rifles, they were on the ball. We got a few cases of ammo in just a week or so after the guns showed up. On the reloading aisle Hornady has sent us a lot of projectiles in a fairly wide variety as well as getting loaded ammo out to us.
All the other companies are getting more products shipped more often as well. Things are getting a lot better. You won’t find everything available just yet, but there will be something.
Ben Thompson
Basin Sports
