Driving 1500 miles and 5-states; strategy to find ammo?

Unfortunately, stocking up for a year or a decade might not cut it anymore. I have 7500 rounds of 22 LR stocked up and wish I had more.

Local gun store has one brick at $125. I don’t think so...

Well I wish you luck, but I wouldn’t count on any huge scores.
It sounds like a good time though!
id save yourself a lot of time and brain damage by calling around to whichever shops you’d be considering.

Once upon a time my wife and I spent about a week driving around Colorado in a slightly hopped up S-10, searching for ghost towns via the gnarliest routes possible. it was a blast!

I think you might have to find yourself a new girlfriend in Arizona too. I think she might end her trip around the Idaho-Utah line.

I enjoy stopping in mom and pop LGS whenever I'm out and about somewhere I've never been. 3 hours from where you live may yield something in higher demand back home, but collecting dust there.

If you have an idea of things you're in need of or looking for, post on the classifieds here...especially if you have any trade bait. List the major cities you'll be travelling near and if any THR members are looking to part with things on your shopping list, you may just get the added bonus of meeting folks you've shared this experience with.

TheBruce said:

Well, you can find stuff around here. Every time I go to Scheels or Sportsmans Warehouse they have plenty of 6mm, 8mm, 350 and 375 bullets, since apparently nobody shoots those calibers. Some other oddball cartridges like 26 Nosler. Of course powder and primers are a different story. Scheels is your best bet though. Last time they had powder in stock I bought some Titegroup and they had no limit. I also found 22 and 40 ammo and 45 bullets at Cabelas a couple weeks ago. They also had 7.62x51 ball ammo if you're willing to shell out $1.50 per round. I'm not.

It's just all about luck of timing.

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No powder or primers of any type at Scheels as of Friday - I was there.

To heck with searching for ammo. You might want to enjoy the trip, see the sights spend your time with the lady make her happy. Spending time searching for the almost non existent will take away from the vacation imo but ymmv...

There was plenty of ammo at the local gun show over the weekend but there is no way I would pay those prices. They were asking over $1 a round for 9mm. They had primers too for $20 per 100 or more. LOL

Every time I find ammo or supplies locally it is at prices I refuse to pay, 67$ a 1000 primers, 35-40$ a lb for pwdr, 30$ + per 100 for rifle bullets, 36$ + for rifle ammo, at those prices I'll let everyone else buy.
Locally Academy gets deliveries twice a week and those mornings there is ammo in stock for a few hrs at full retail

I'd try here:
https://sportsworldnevada.com/

Been a few years since I last passed through Ely on "The Loneliest Road in America" but is a nice store

I have made stopping at local gun shops while traveling a regular part of my itinerary for many years. I started doing that with my bro-n-law when we visited them in Albany, NY. He had no interest in guns, but wanted me to enjoy my visit. We would cruise all the LGS locations and end with a beer at a local watering hole. We became good friends in the process and I found stuff I wanted. When my wife and I took a snow-bird vacation to Florida in winter of 2019, I cruised several LGS and found a few odds and ends. Found one store that had an amazing inventory of firearms, which gave me a great opportunity to handle a number of guns that I've only seen pictures of on line. In the summer of 2020, we spent a month in Bozeman, MT. Of course, I looked up all the local gun shops and spent many hours with them. Those shops and the people who ran them became some of the most memorable experiences of that trip. Found some Hornady 17HMR ammo on sale at a shop in Livingston, MT for $90 per brick with no sales tax. Bought some and wish I had bought it all.
Found a place called Montana Tactical in Gallatin that had the best display of SBRs and braced pistols that I have ever seen. The guy at Montana Tactical invited us to a fund-raiser that, for a donation, you could shoot a full-auto 50 cal. At that site is the first time my wife has ever shot an SBR. On a drive thru West Yellowstone I found SK Standard Plus .22 ammo at a small place that specialized in building target .22s. And I found a very cool place in the back of Schnee's Boots and Shoes in downtown Bozeman. They had really great collections of rifles at surprisingly good prices. And praise the Lord, I discovered the guns while shopping for shoes with my wife.......and we all know how much fun that can be.
Also learned during my stops at places in Colorado on the drive home from Montana, that Colorado is not nearly as friendly and the prices were at gouge levels. Nebraska and South Dakota were good. One of the best places is in Rapid City, SD. It is downtown and had an amazing inventory and operated by friendly people. Good conversations, friendly people and surrounded by guns and gun people makes a great vacation even better.

I was visiting my daughter and her family about a month ago and hit up the local Sportsman's Warehouse and they had nothing, but tried the local hardware store and found a brick of Federal LPP match.

You also mentioned going down the western edge of Arizona. My father had a place in Bullhead City. There are several gun shops/pawn shops along hwy. 95 all the way to Needles. And for entertainment I suggest Oatman. Neat little mining town that is basically a tourist trap, but it's quaint and descendants from the burrows used to pull mining carts from decades ago come into town a couple of times a day to be fed by the tourists.

When I was married, my Ex needed to go to a convention in Dallas and asked if I'd go with her and drive. I had not had a vacation in a long time and had months of vacation banked up. I said I'd drive and gave her my conditions...

1. We'd allow three days each way (from near Fort Lauderdale in so.Flo) and I'd take back roads (mostly old bypassed towns on the old road)
2. We would stop in gunstores and antique stores (her hobby) as equally as we could find them.
3. No hurrying or destination mania.
4. The same routine on the reverse trip back home.

Believe it or not, we had a freaking ball with a mini van that had two air conditioners, and three cats and a dog with us. One of the best couple of weeks of my life.

I hope you have half as much fun as I did on your trip.

My wife and I often travel the back roads while on vacation. You never know what you will find when you get off the freeway.
We stop at every gun shop that we find. Some times the search is more fun than the find!
Good luck
SC45-70

I wouldn't get my heart set on finding a treasure of components or ammo, but it sounds like a great trip. The mrs and I always wanted to visit the nstural hot-springs of the west. The more remote the better.
Maybe you'll find an arrowhead, its like ammo...but older.

Enjoy your trip @Trey Veston and good luck with finding ammo and reloading supplies.
I have been traveling during COVID.
Travel within a days drive of home. Pay at the pump for gas. Staying in condos and limit contact with others.
I have stopped at a few Gun Shops.Go to the ammo selves and look for what I use. I normal glance over the guns also. Most stops are less than ten minutes.
Can't wait for normalcy.

Trey Veston said:

<Snip>
We are now going on a year of the greatest ammo and components drought in modern history of our country. Very few people anticipated it lasting this long. None of us has seen it this bad.

This isn't a thread about some newbie who was ignorant, or a long-time owner who ignored the past. It is simply a thread pontificating about the chances of stumbling on ammo and components on a long road trip.

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Glad to hear you were somewhat prepared, however, calling this "the greatest ammo and components drought in modern history of our country" seem a bit of an overstatement, Sandy Hook lasted over 2 years ... but maybe that depends on you location.

Here in the mid-west, we wern't experience any shortages in arms, ammo or components until well after the riots started, maybe July/August and most 22LR, 223, 9mm & 45 ammo, was plentiful until about October. The most common firearms supply, especially Glock's & AR's could still be had but prices were escalating. Even into December, our last gunshow the ammo guys had pallets of all the common rounds. They were a little higher than usual but not as stupid as they are now from the scalpers.
By early January we were starting to see outages of 9mm & 223, then February everything dried up ... all of a sudden, it was kinda weird.

Now, a few gun shops will only sell you a box of ammo if you are buying the gun it fits from them, because they are having trouble getting ammo too ... their reasoning is that its harder to sell a gun if there is no ammo available for it.
It really hurt when Walmart & Dicks quit selling ammo but even when they were, sporting goods stores, like Academy still get & sell ammo at pre-pandemic prices, but even with limits, its gone within hours, so if you work at an 8-5 job, you have no chance of getting any.

Enjoy your trip, and good luck!!!

I think you’ll score.

since I was Xmas shopping on 11/09/2020, I have picked up 5,000 SRPs, 2,000 SPPs and a 1,000 209s. I make a weekly trip to Reno, hit Scheels, Cabelas and Sportsmans. Quite a few dry runs but when I score 1,000 primers, the trip was worth it. Powder is hit or miss yet several times I’ve seen powder in stock but didn’t buy any because I have more than I’ll ever use.

Good luck!!!

PS: The advice to hit the bigger places at opening is great advice.

SC45-70 said:

My wife and I often travel the back roads while on vacation. You never know what you will find when you get off the freeway.
We stop at every gun shop that we find. Some times the search is more fun than the find!
Good luck
SC45-70

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My wife and I ALWAYS travel the US and other non-Interstates; much nicer ride, no NASCAR with 18 wheelers and motorhomes and the chance to stop at local gun stores, farmer's markets, etc. It takes a little longer, but my lowered blood pressure means I'll live a lot longer............

Trey Veston said:

Driving the full length of Idaho

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Hey Trey, if you go through Lewiston, how about swinging by Speer and CCI and letting us know what they look like? Are the parking lots full? Does it look like they're running full capacity?
I'd be surprised to hear they're not really pumping out ammo and components as fast as they can. But I'd be interested in hearing about it from someone who is not a "wheel" with one of those organizations.

.308 Norma said:

Hey Trey, if you go through Lewiston, how about swinging by Speer and CCI and letting us know what they look like? Are the parking lots full? Does it look like they're running full capacity?
I'd be surprised to hear they're not really pumping out ammo and components as fast as they can. But I'd be interested in hearing about it from someone who is not a "wheel" with one of those organizations.

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BTDT trip several times when I lived in northern NV; headed north out of Winnnemucca and all the way up past Bonner's Ferry. Come up out of Lewiston and onto the Palouse is quite a great scenic view.

BTW, Sedalia Mo is where Sierra Bullets are made ... if you get out that far they do have a factory outlet. also they used to give tours of the plant but the best part was they used to sell 2nds there ... if something like a random sample of 10% were too far from specification, they scrapped that entire lot, and sold them as scrap. I would buy several thousand 69 grain 223 Match King, and 168grain 308 Match King ... inspect and weigh each one, and sort them into different boxes with a difference of + or - .3grain and generally I'd end up with 30-40 that were deformed or outside of the correct weight ... this was back when my youngest daughter was infant to toddler, and do that and I'd just sit with her while she was playing ... otherwise it was pretty mind numbing.

Also, next door to Sierra there was another company that produced primers but they were never been open when I went to Sierra.

Good luck on your trip!

Trey Veston said:

Taking a 3-week road trip vacation from Washington state, down to the Arizona/Mexico border next week to do some off-road exploring, mine and ghost town exploring, and visiting family.

Driving the full length of Idaho, then Utah, a couple of hundred miles in Nevada, then the entire Western edge of Arizona.

I warned my girlfriend that I would be stopping at most gun shops and large sporting goods chains I spotted along the way in search of mostly primers, powder, and bullets.

Seems like I hear from gun owners around the country that some areas seem to have more reloading components than others. A few folks in the states where there is a lower percentage of gun ownership also have a lower interest in reloading, so powder, bullets, and even some primers can still be found.

In my area, I've been able to buy one can of powder and one box of 100 primers in 5 months. Tons of shooters and reloaders around here.

Not sure I will have much success, despite covering such a large area since most of it is in states with a lot of gun owners.

What do you think my chances of actually scoring anything will be? And should I focus on stopping at the larger stores like Sportsman's Warehouse and Cabela's, or try to find the smaller local shops?

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try these folks, they got some stuff, just way too far for me to drive, good luck.
https://www.murdochs.com/stores/

When you no longer have any expectations at all, and have actually given up hope, there can be a surprise.

Ignition Override said:

When you no longer have any expectations at all, and have actually given up hope, there can be a surprise.

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