Sep 17, 2020 4 min read

I don’t know if you have noticed but there is a major lack of firearms in local stores. Of more importance, there is also a shortage of ammunition. It is very difficult to bag a record buck without both. Of course, one can always enter the archery season with ammo that can be used more than once, and Pennsylvania is becoming an archery-hunting state.

Why haven’t the shelves of ammo in the stores been re-stocked? There was a time when I would advise hunters to purchase their ammo now. This was especially true if the hunter was using a cartridge that was a bit dated and demand for it was limited. An example of this would be the hunter who looks for the .300 Savage, or even rarer, the .250-3000. Both were chambered in the old, but still used, 99 Savage.

In its heyday the Savage Lever Rifle was a popular tool carried by the Pennsylvania deer hunter roaming the north woods of Potter and McKean counties. This represented a move to a more powerful rifle than the carbine.

There are many others that while still produced by the ammo makers aren’t easy to find. There are many hunters that, for nostalgic reasons, like to hunt with the old but adequate rifles and cannot because they cannot find cartridges. Try going into a store today to buy a box. You might have to enter many stores to find a box, if there are any to be found.

I realize there are hunters out there who don’t get Old Betsy out of the closet and her half-box of ammo until the day before the hunt and they are just fine about this. It is this hunter who doesn’t even realize there is a shortage until it is too late. Of course, there can be another problem. As most of us know, we not only need the correct ammo for the rifle we are shooting but we also need the right brand and the correct weight. This all depends on what the rifle is sighted in for. It is a rare rifle that shoots different weight bullets to the exact same point.

You might find – if you are lucky – a box of ammo for your trusty 7 MM Mauser rifle, but try to find a box of 139 grain bullets to use. I’d doubt if there are any 139 grains anywhere to be had.

The problem even enters the picture if you reload. Go to the reloading department of a local major store and you find shelves with little or no bullets to build a load around. The bullets that are there are not the ones that are commonly used to deer hunt. Some of this problem might be supply-and-demand related. The hunters are all loading up on supplies at the same time as deer season approaches. Much of this group is made up of those who ignore that rifle until a week before the season begins.

Once, while working in a sporting goods shop, I had a fellow approach me about a scope with a broken reticle. It seems the crosshairs broke the previous year and he waited until the Friday before the Monday opener to think of having it repaired. I explained I had to ship it to California to the location of the company to get it fixed. He didn’t understand why and cursed me a bit.

It was a Friday afternoon, so he thought the whole repair package, including the shipping, should be done by Monday so he could take it out on a hunt. The company that does the shipping didn’t even work on the weekends.

The point is, its too late to repair equipment, and if you need ammo then you better start looking. I have no idea how long this shortage will last.