I needed some special bullets for my lion hunt
coming up in a few weeks and none of our distributors had any in stock. The bullet was the 375 caliber Hornady DGX, Dangerous Game Expanding. Steve Hornady is a good friend so I dropped him a note last night to see if he had a box or two of the bullets. Steve is a great guy and a better friend you will never have. That is why all our custom dies are Hornady Custom and I try my best to promote his bullets. Here is Steve's reply to my note,
Gary,
I can sympathize. I’m leaving for Africa week from tomorrow and needed some 375 Ruger ammo and we were out so I told the guys to handload some and we didn’t have any bullets! Ended up some of our people had a stash at home so I was able to get enough for my trip. Saying all that to tell you I don’t have two boxes to send, I don’t have one box! but I do have 20 bullets which I will send. I am sorry I can’t do better but with everything going on last year we didn’t run quite a few items since the demand was so low and now we can’t catch up!
Regards,
SH
this should quell some of the BS about
the ammo makers and bullet makers not making ammo so they can jack up the prices or giving it to the government so they can take over the country. When the owner of a multi million dollar company is so far behind loading ammo for the shooters in this country that he can't even come up with bullets or ammo for his Africa hunt and has to borrow 40 rounds from an employee, that should say something about the ammo situation in the country. And when he is a good enough friend to send me 20 of the bullets for my lion hunt, that says something too. And his last few words "we can't catch up" should tell us even more. Steve Hornady is a very decent man who is doing everything he can to help the ammo situation in this country and I am proud to call him friend.
I took from it that it's not easy to just re-set up tooling
for a production run of any old caliber you want. I'm sure they are focused on .22 LR, 9mm, .380, .38/.357 etc. the stuff in such high demand. Shocking that my .30-30 ammo on the shelf is priced what .300 WBY "USED" to be. There is just not enough to go around and the price reflects that.
It will be a long time before they start putting out more .25 super short untra-fat magnum ammo again. If you see it and you need it you better GET it.
I talked to another friend that is an ammo maker and he said
the main money problem is thanks to Obama our last lead smelter was shut down. They have to get it from South America. The same goes for copper and brass out of South America and powder out of Australia. So the old easy inexpensive way of getting the materials needed to produce ammo is considerably more expensive than it was 5 years ago.
years ago there was a display at the SHOT Show that
would run 38 special ammo at a rate of 50,000 rounds per hour. The set up was probably 20 feet wide and maybe 8 feet tall so it would take up most of a person's whole reloading room. It was fully automated and there were large hoppers of brass, bullets, powder and primers that fed the monster automatically. I am sure today's commercial reloading set ups are much bigger. So changing to another caliber or just to another style bullet or to another hotter or lighter load wasn't just a push button thing.
I'm sure it's the same for oddball ammo.
Changing out progressive press tooling, for me at least, is never as easy as some say. It takes me tinkering a while to get things right. Even if I don't shoot springs or little steel balls across the room. I don't enjoy that much. Makes a man want a press set for each caliber!
that is my reasoning for this..
![[image]](images/uploaded/2021071005541960e9360bd7c35.jpg)
![[image]](images/uploaded/2021070923522560e8e139e61e7.jpg)
![[image]](images/uploaded/2021070923524660e8e14e28890.jpg)
![[image]](images/uploaded/2021070923530960e8e16551e45.jpg)
![[image]](images/uploaded/2021071005553560e9365745fcc.jpg)
And I have added 2 more Dillon presses since these pics. By the time we close the shops and the gun store, get home and get a bite to eat it is 8PM. So I don't have a helluva lot of time to spare. each of these presses is set up for one cartridge (2 if you count 38 spl and 357 mag). So when I get home I can sit down and crank out 200 rounds in less than an hour and I am ready for the next day at the shop. Most press makers say you can change out calibers in a minute or less but that is pure BS. It takes at least 30 minutes if I change calibers, especially from small primer to large primer and run a test round and so on. We shoot sometimes 500 rounds a week test firing custom guns so I need to load just about every night.