I reloaded for years, mostly 12, 20, and 28 ga. In the heyday of my bunker shooting career, I was into loading between 10 and 12,000 rounds per year in 12 ga., almost a necessity for practice. Synchronizing the availability and variety of components needed was always a problem in some form or another. When ammunition became unbelievably cheap (Bass Pro held sales twice a year; 12 or 20 ga. Remington or Winchester target ammo was $2.39 a box with NO LIMIT on purchases per person!), I re-evaluated my needs for having large volumes of ammo on hand; this coincided with my quitting bunker competition in the late 1990s.
I finally came to the decision that if my time was worth anything at all, I wanted to spend it breaking clays instead of standing in front of a loading press. I packed up all my components and presses and took the whole lot to our local gun show and sold it. My experiences reloading reminded me of the old cliche of owning a boat: "Two of the happiest days of my life were the day I bought it and the day I sold it!"
Now of course things are totally different: the fits and starts of ammo manufacturing, transport and delivery, the impact of the pandemic on labor, and the devil-may-care attitude of many retailers, some of whom may rightfully be labeled 'gougers' on ammo prices, have all combined to produce an opportunistic "seek and you shall find" impetus for those in search of shotshell ammo. Much like water, pricing seeks its own level under these conditions: one of the larger ammo purveyors at our local gun show offers 12 ga. target ammo at a relatively steady $90 per flat. He usually has a good stock but it goes quickly at those prices; by mid-afternoon of the second day of the show he is usually down to partial flats only. My personal approach has been to buy as much of it as I can afford when and where I find it, which so far has worked well.
Our small shooting group (6-8 guys) who meet weekly put in a large order with a major ammo wholesaler about a year before the pandemic really took hold. Under a minimum purchase limit, we were able to buy standard target ammo at roughly $45 per flat for 12 and 20 ga. and a little more for 28 and .410. When we tried to put in a second order, the effects of the COVID plague made assembling any kind of volume selections in gauge, shot size, etc. impossible. I don't think we will ever see $45 a flat ammo prices again but who am I to say. I would trade an increase in price within reason for availability and selection anytime. Given the economy of scale in ammunition production, sooner or later the combination of availability of components, labor requirements, production, shipping and transport will slowly reach equilibrium and let us buy what we want where and when we want it.
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