22-250 is my favorite caliber for where and what I hunt and I still cant hardly get it

This is over 2 years, approaching 3...luckily I had plenty but I am 1 more year out from being in a bind

6mm Rem
.243
6.5 cm (good stuff)

I get the 6mm, but dam .243. 6.5, (143's)...

Its like a dam conspiracy nobody talks about

What else is bad...I am just short of going 223/308, screw it

Before anybody says, I have always kept plenty...own my own range and hunt, its hard to keep a decades worth of anything good

For example, I think I had near 25 boxes of 22-250 3 years ago..DAM...

Yup, they are still trying to catchup and of course they make the most popular first. Until I see the limited run ammo back on the shelves a crunch is not over

It just gets irritating, if we were sea turtles and had 300 plus years it wouldn't matter as much

But its just gotten old

I like to hunt and shoot and its hard to keep a stash of what I like

Shooting 25-30 pigs along makes a dent....not to mention WT or paid hunts, range time..

The 2 you can keep seem to be 223/308, maybe thats what they want

Maybe I should get rid of it all and get them IDK

Solve the problem and load your own.

Yeah, handloading is the only way to ensure you got everything you need ammo wise. And that comes at a higher price than most would like now.

There is a slight reprieve in the shortage atm, for popular calibers at least, but it's not going to last. There is about a year left on the last handful of valid permits for Russian ammo imports and once those run out, the lack of Russian ammo imports is going to wreak havoc on the market. And that's only one of a dozen major issues in play.

Yeah, I’m still looking for .357 Mag and .338 Win Mag. When I see these back on the shelf, I’ll call the shortage over.

.22-250?

What bullet do you want?

I can’t get everything I want as a bandleader spotty availability and some just hasn’t been in stock. I haven’t seen center fire primers on a shelf in a long time.

.357 and .338 are handloader's rounds.

I took my mother in law for her first range trip and they had large rifle primers, limit two boxes a customer.. she was a good sport and went back in for her own two boxes..

But in early to mid 2021 I went into academy and they had one box of most stuff and just a whole shelf full of 30 carbine and some AR wildcat (450 patriot? Legend? 460 ChuckNorris?).

“It gets easier but it never gets easy”.. lol.

Hand loading is more work but less shopping around right?

It'll come back around. But, it will disappear again. That has been the cycle for at least two decades now. I was handloading the rounds that I shot in high volume, and buying factory for the .308 and .270 that I shot very little. When things started looking scarce again, I was afraid that I would end up in the same boat as you at some point, so I scrambled to get dies and bullets for .270 and .308. I already had suitable powder and primers from other things that I loaded. In the .308, I have about shot up all the factory stuff and am now loading. In the .270, I still have plenty of factory stuff left, but when it's gone, I have plenty of components. Handloading is the only way to assure that you have what you need, when you need it. You also get to play around and get loads that you could never get form factory. I shoot a lot of 180 gr 357 mag in subsonic form out of a rifle. Can't get that off the shelf even when ammo is plentiful.

FIFY

I’ve been told that ammo manufacturers are focusing on the more popular rounds right now, like .223, 6.5, 9mm, etc., which is why a lot of other rounds are hard to find. Makes sense to me.

Most dicey is 55g 22-250 and I never see them for sale, EVER

Im around 10-15 left, Oklahoma says centerfire is a 55g min for Whitetails

I won't even load them unless I am heading north

Ive got about 6-8 boxes of 50's which is fine for pigs in OK and Texas WT's or range time

55g 22-250
143g 6.5 cm

The ones I hunt w like them, id prefer to not change grains but after a few years...it may be time

Just did a quick search and found 2 Nosler bullets (Balistic Tip and Varmageddon) in 55 grain. (Only search I did)

Even if you were to get into reloading now, finding components for a specific cartridge is nearly impossible. The first hurdle would be primers, if you can get them, then gearing up for reloading is easy.

I’m a reloader , began doing so around 2010 so I’m fairly new to the game when compared to those who have been doing it for decades.

Reloading when I began wasn’t saving me a lot of money on center fire rifle cartridges, primers were $ 35 bucks per 1000, brass was $ 30 per 100 and bullets were anywhere from $ 25 to $ 45 per 50/100 count. This doesn’t factors the other costs of dies, powder, annealing, and my time.

I enjoyed reloading and saving a few bucks because ultimately I had total control over the ammo I turned out and results showed (less random flyers, a tad higher velocity, and much knowledge gained).

To your point:

Somebody considering jumping into reloading today is probably not going to save any money at all versus buying factory ammo. Primarily the cost disadvantage is primers at their newfound price baseline $ 90 which I used to be able to get brass, primers, and bullets for that same cost.

Now for me , reloading is a choice about my time and where to spend it

Last week I bought 30 boxes of Norma 308 Win for $ 16.99 a box delivered , so I suppose for that price I can shoot factory ammo all of 2023 and not have to buy any primers…

If a person is an old hand loader like me, he probably has most of what is needed to run off a bunch of ammo. But buying new components these days is mighty expensive, but factory ammo is worse. I was at Academy yesterday and looked for Winchester white box 380 ammo. It was $102 plus tax for 100 rounds. Geez! Good news is they had it. Bad news was the price. I have new 95 gr cast bullets at 11 cents each. Primers at 10 cents each. Already have the brass, and powder per round is pennies. More bad news is that I hate loading 380, but I’ll do it.

Today I load a bunch of 270. If I had to buy all the bits needed to do it, it might be $1.20 for brass each. 65 cents for a Nosler BT, 10 cents for the primer and 30ish cents for powder. Ouch! Go back to when I got all the bits, and it’s 60 cents for the brass case, 5 cents for the primer, about 15 cents for powder, and 35 cents for the Nosler BT. If we ignore the brass cost, since you may have it saved up, today’s load cost is 95 cents per round versus my stock cost of 55 cents. So, if you have the brass already, it still makes sense to reload versus factory ammo.

All numbers above are guesses based on what I have on hand (memory) and what new stuff appears to cost.