How does one 'forget' about ammo ?

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A few years ago I found a couple bricks of .22 ammo in my garage, still in the bag with the receipt. First time it's happened with ammo, but other times I've found bags from the hardware store the same way months after I bought them. My wife has a habit of meeting me in the garage when I get home with some emergency that in her mind absolutely cannot wait so I end up dropping the bag of whatever's in my hand in some corner, and soon it gets covered up.
 
Organizing the reloading area over the weekend I found 1,000 CCI Small Rifle Primer and 1,000 Remington Small Rifle Benchrest Primers! I thought I was down to about 3,000 SRP's so this find will help me keep going for a while longer.

I also found a couple hundred more rounds of 7.5 Swiss ammo than I thought I had.
 
bassjam said:
First time it's happened with ammo, but other times I've found bags from the hardware store the same way months after I bought them.
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That happens to me too, but it's more likely I put off doing whatever it was I bought the hardware for than forgetting I bought it.

I also used to pick up reloading stuff in yard sales when I found it. If it was cheap, I'd buy it whenever I ran across it...then drop it off at my dad's. After not reloading for a good while, then getting back into it with calibers I'd never loaded in the past, it was nice having stuff for those calibers already stashed away. Dad's been better at knowing what I had than I've been. Not sure how I had picked up close to 30 sets of RCBS dies over the years but never managed to end up with 45acp though.
 
I've had it happen before. If you typically buy in bulk and don't really buy it in individual boxes it's fairly easy to lose track of what you have if bought in small quantities here and there.. For me it's usually after finding a deal or a couple boxes here or there of this and that, it gets tucked away or whatever, then one day you find it.

On the flip side, losing ammo is the worst. Its ok if you find it but I have some buffalo bore that I know I bought and didn't shoot that is missing. Also one day I went shooting with a family member and we both brought our daughters to shoot .22lr so we both had alot of similar stuff on the bench and I know for a fact I ended up going home with one less 555rd bulk pack. Not the kind of thing I would make an argument over, so I just let it go.... honest mistake..
 
22250Rem said:
While we are on the subject of forgotten ammo, here's something I began doing when I started building up my 22LR brick by brick. I put the purchase date on the box with a sharpie so when I re-discover some of it a few years later the older stuff gets used first. Not that it makes much difference but just sort of a rotating stock procedure used by many businesses. F.I.F.O......... ( First In - First Out ).
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I started dating powder and primers several years ago. Like you said, use the oldest first. I also put an "O" on my powder cans to show me that they have been opened.
 
I'm easily distracted and forget stuff all the time. Didn't used to be that way. A few months ago, I re-organized some stuff and decided to take inventory of my .22LR ammo. I got caught with my pants down during the Sandy Hook shortage. Went from 2000-3000rds a month to almost nothing. When ammo started becoming available I started buying. As I went through it all to make a count, there's no telling how many times I said, "where did this come from?". What I thought was barely enough to get by turned out to be 56,000rds.
 
Hooda Thunkit said:
I keep reading threads in various places, some fella saying something like ' ....well, I was looking under the bench, and found a case of XYZ I had forgotten about ...'

I just shake my head. How does one forget about ammo ? Especially these days with it being so dear.

Anyway, I was on a local forum, and a member there wants to trade some ammo for possibly some 22LR. I can use the ammo he has, so I went out to the bunker to look at my stock of 22LR. I know I have some over there on the shelf, and a 30cal ammo can under the shelf with some open box and oddball stuff - 22short, quiets, and whatnot.

I pull out the 30 cal can to open it, and see another can behind it. It has a label that states '22LR'. This time it's a 50 cal can. Open it up, it's full of various boxes of 22LR. Several thousand rounds.

Huh !

Then, I see ANOTHER 50 cal can under the first, and it's ALSO full of 22LR. Some Winchester, some CCI, some Golden Bullets (yeah, I know...), some Aquila.

Well.... I suppose it is possible for a young, vibrant male (in his 7th decade) to lose track of a few piddly rounds of 22....;) I have plenty to trade with this other fellow.

Then, I notice another 30 cal can in the corner under the shelf, hidden by the 2 cans of 22LR. Open it up, there's 20 boxes of 20ea Norma Tactical 55gr .223 Rem in there.

400 rounds of 223 I have no recollection of buying.o_O

Ahem.... I have nothing to say....
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LOL :) And now you know!

When I retired in 2015 I started trying to reorganize my life. I started in my closet. Then I went on to my drawers. Then my shop. Three local electricians bought most of my electrical inventory, and that freed up a lot of space. I found 3 five gallon buckets of wheelweights stashed under some scrap lumber. I found my RCBS shooting bench and a set of bags that were AWOL. I found a couple more Lyman style ingot molds that I forgot about buying. The list goes on and on.

I recently posted in the "What did you do in the loading room today" thread about building some shelves in my storeroom for my ammo thats stored in ammo cans. When I started moving them I found a box of new misc tractor stuff. Pull pins, lytch pins, ect that I had forgot about. Also a can full of 38 special brass and a can full of 30-06 brass.

I recently inventoried my primers and powder. I probably won't keep the list up to date but at least now I know what I need or don't need.

When the first Gulf War started there was a local guy here making a living buying stuff at government auctions. I bought 2 pallets of 50 caliber ammo cans from him for $1 each. I still have a few empty ones.
 
You could focus - instead - on a Gun, which needs some stain, possibly Super Blue etc.

Or on a gun which could be Detail Stripped to allow polishing (my S&W 6904), to try and improve the (decent) DA trigger pull.

Combine all of the above.
 
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OK, top this one. I bought a 3# keg of Winchester 230 powder just shortly before Winchester quit making it. I reloaded out of it some but I was extremely busy with my job and didn't get to do much shooting for several years. Somehow it got pushed back out of sight and and I ran across it a couple of years or so ago while rearranging things. I even managed to find my old manuals with load data for it so I'm now using it in 380, 9 mm, 38 special, and 45 acp loads. I have it sitting in plain sight now where I won't lose it again. A 3# powder container is pretty good sized yet I managed to lose it for years. I bought an 8# container of Winchester 296 at the same time. It's big enough that I never lost it. My children may still have some of that when I gone at the rate I'm shooting it up.
 
Ammo? I keep finding 5K Winchester small pistol primers here and there. The ammo cans are well labeled.
 
Look what I re-discovered today.... IMG_0303.JPG ...... 60 rounds of 12 ga. "00" Buckshot from the forgotten past. Actually 2013-14 when a local shop had 'em stacked up on the counter. Every time I went in there I'd get 2 or 3 boxes because they were priced right, although I can't recall the price and they're not marked. I have zero experience with buckshot and just bought them out of curiosity planning to shoot some gallon jugs of water or something. Never did get around to that and all my shotgun deer hunting has always been with slugs. I suppose these were sold as defensive ammo because that's about the only use for them around here. At least I'll get to explode a few gallons of water filled milk jugs and keep the rest as part of the defensive ammo stash. Glad this thread popped up; nice to see I'm not the only one re-discovering stuff I'd forgotten about.
 
I'll trade 1K of the WSP's for 1K of SRP if you live in central Michigan. Trade because all primers are un-replaceable in today's market. (unobtanium).
MY supply of small rifle is down to 1K- Groan!
 
I have a lot of ammo. About two years I started storing my handgun and 22 ammo in a different location in the house from where I store my rifle and shotgun ammo. It wasn’t to make it easier to find. I had just ran out of room and the ammo cans were starting to stack up pretty high.
I keep about 90% of my ammo in metal military ammo cans with labels on the front that are color coded. It just makes it easy to find what I’m looking for.
Here’s just some of my ammo. 88EEAE94-C455-45EA-9784-66959701BB99.jpeg

72AE4898-479B-4C06-BFD7-2C27A72B6373.jpeg
Now from time to time I will come across a box or two that I put aside and forgot about, but very seldom do I forget about ammo that I buy. Now when it comes to guns, I have forgotten about a few, like when I thought I had eleven Mosin M91 rifles and discovered that I actually have 14 of them.
 
I actually do have an (excel) inventory reload log for my reloading components, and I had added in the factory ammo in another tab. However, while I am pretty good at updating the inventory for the reloading components, and as I buy new components I enter them into the respective tabs for bullets, primers and powders. the ammo wasn't give the same level of attention. The reloading piece is "easy". I have formulas that decrease the quantities from the primers, bullets and powder, providing me "live" accountability as I enter the reload details into the sheets/reload log.
Given the current state of affairs, I decided to double-check my stash, particularly 22LR. Well, I knew that I had bought a couple of cases after the last drought was over. But, I was wanting to be sure I had recorded it all. Well, low and behold -- I had completely forgotten to add in a case here, a brick there, etc... All told my 22LR count went from 25K to around 48K. OK, I'm not worried now... But, conversely, my 9MM went from 9+K to ~8K.

So, yeah, even though I have an "inventory system", my failure in keeping it updated led to a nice re-discovery of a "stash" of 22LR.
 
GunnyUSMC said:
I have a lot of ammo. About two years I started storing my handgun and 22 ammo in a different location in the house from where I store my rifle and shotgun ammo. It wasn’t to make it easier to find. I had just ran out of room and the ammo cans were starting to stack up pretty high.
I keep about 90% of my ammo in metal military ammo cans with labels on the front that are color coded. It just makes it easy to find what I’m looking for.
Here’s just some of my ammo.View attachment 976677

View attachment 976679
Now from time to time I will come across a box or two that I put aside and forgot about, but very seldom do I forget about ammo that I buy. Now when it comes to guns, I have forgotten about a few, like when I thought I had eleven Mosin M91 rifles and discovered that I actually have 14 of them.
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Hey Gunny, somehow I think you would have to discover a pallet of ammo before you would raise an eyebrow. :D
 
Hooda Thunkit said:
I keep reading threads in various places, some fella saying something like ' ....well, I was looking under the bench, and found a case of XYZ I had forgotten about ...'

I just shake my head. How does one forget about ammo ? Especially these days with it being so dear.

Anyway, I was on a local forum, and a member there wants to trade some ammo for possibly some 22LR. I can use the ammo he has, so I went out to the bunker to look at my stock of 22LR. I know I have some over there on the shelf, and a 30cal ammo can under the shelf with some open box and oddball stuff - 22short, quiets, and whatnot.

I pull out the 30 cal can to open it, and see another can behind it. It has a label that states '22LR'. This time it's a 50 cal can. Open it up, it's full of various boxes of 22LR. Several thousand rounds.

Huh !

Then, I see ANOTHER 50 cal can under the first, and it's ALSO full of 22LR. Some Winchester, some CCI, some Golden Bullets (yeah, I know...), some Aquila.

Well.... I suppose it is possible for a young, vibrant male (in his 7th decade) to lose track of a few piddly rounds of 22....;) I have plenty to trade with this other fellow.

Then, I notice another 30 cal can in the corner under the shelf, hidden by the 2 cans of 22LR. Open it up, there's 20 boxes of 20ea Norma Tactical 55gr .223 Rem in there.

400 rounds of 223 I have no recollection of buying.o_O

Ahem.... I have nothing to say....
Click to expand...


Very common among those that practice the buy low, stock for the bad times. When you are old stuff happens but you can't remember why but we oldsters have lived through at least a half dozen of these "shortages" and learned from the past. Shoot or load one, buy two.

I just "found" 500 rounds of 12ga birdshot I thought I had shot up years ago. Every box was sticker priced under $4.
A year and a half ago I shot the last of my Federal Monark 22lr was always on sale at my local gas station for 39¢/bx back in the 1970's.
Checking my powder supplies last weekend, this was tucked away in the corner,
Note it is still sealed.
Herco.jpg
Probably have a few hundred 115 gr. 38sp. cast by a friend stuffed behind my plated and FMJ's but, I will look for them for later.
 
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