Is ammunition becoming more available?

I read an article in the business section of a national newspaper ta few weeks ago that said the demand for and sales of guns and ammunition had been slowing down. Coincidentally, I received an email from Sportsman's Guide saying they'd just gotten in a big shipment of Wolf .22 Match ammunition. I thought about it, and decided to buy a few brinks, just to be on the safe side. A week later I saw this in a number of papers:

"Despite overall Black Friday spending down 11-percent nationwide, gun sales increased that weekend and Montana store owners report they just keep rising."

I went back to Sportsman's Guide and saw they were out of the Wolf, along with just about every other .22LR with the exception of some of the more expensive Ely and RWS match ammunition.

Surprisingly, they did have a lot of ammunition in stock that's been difficult to find. They've got a few dozen varieties of .380ACP, and not just the premium stuff- they have PMC (50 rounds/$15.95) GECO, Federal and a few other under-$20 boxes. I counted 36 different varieties of .38 Special in stock, and several other calibers that have been in short supply. The biggest shortages were in rimfire ammunition of all sorts. There was zero .22Mag, .17HMR or .17Mach2.

Over at Midway, things looked a bit better, with several non-match .22LR varies being available- although not my favorite, CCI Standard Velocity. But reloading powder is still in very short supply, with only 17 differ t smokeless powders in stock- and none of my old standbys, Bullseye, Unique, 2400, and Trail Boss.  I have a few bottles of each of these on hand, which should get me through a year or so. There's one bright light:  Midway appears to have plenty of small pistol primers from Winchester, CCI, Federal and Remington, none of which could be found a year ago. Maybe supply is finally starting to catch up with demand.

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High scope mounts

The usual advice in mounting a scope or sights is to get as close to the barrel as possible. For a scope, that means selecting a mount that just allies the bell of the scope to clear the receiver with maybe enough space to allow a scope cover to slide over. The reason is simple: the farther apart the axes of the scope and the barrel, the greater the error in aiming if the rifle isn't held perfectly level.

But the are some cases in which there's an advantage to a high mount. One is with air rifles, like the Air Arms Pro Sport seen above. Pellets travel a lot slower than bullets, and have a lot more drag. Consequently, their trajectories are not as flat over their useful range as would be a .22 or a small caliber, high velocity rifle bullet. A 12-16 foot-pound gun like this Pro Sport, if zeroed at 22 yards, is going to see a drop of close to two inches between that distance and the maximum useful range of 50 yards. That's a lot of correction to dial into a scope- 16 clicks in a quarter minute of angle adjustable scope.

But if the scope is mounted two inches above the barrel, it's alignment is going to be a lot closer to the downward arc of the pellet than if it was mounted lower. A lot of field target shooters and some airgun hunters mount their scopes high for this reason. A second advantage is that on some stocks it's easier to get a good sight picture with a high mount. 

There are some disadvantages. The earlier mentioned problem of error increasing as the gun is tilted is one. Another is that some scopes don't have enough adjustment range to deal with a high mount; in those case scope rings can be shimmed, or you can purchase an intermount from Barska and other suppliers that has a built-in angle correction. Such mounts are designed to correct for the "barrel droop" seen in some break barrel guns, but they work well in this application, too.

High scope mounting isn't appropriate for all applications, but it might solve a scope problem you have. Don't be afraid to try it just because the experts say you should always mount a scope as low as possible.

A good 125gr load for the Ruger LCRx

A lot of the commercial defensive loads for the .28 Special use 110gr or 125gr JHPs, in part because the lighter projectile  results in lower recoil, compared to the old standard 158gr LRN or SWC.  I have a few boxes of these Speer 125gr JHPs on hand- I found a good deal on them last year- and decided to see if I could find a good load for my LCRx. I decided to start with Bullseye powder, as it's the fastest burning powder I have on hand. A fast powder means more complete combustion in a short barrel, and that means better efficiency. 

The Lee manual suggests 4.5-4.8gr of Bullseye behind this bullet for a +P load. Alliant's own data gives 4.5gr for the standard .38 Special load, and 4.8gr for the +P load. I decided to start at the low end. The Lee .49cc disk delivers a measured 4.5-4.6gr, according to my Hornady digital scale, so I decided to go with that. I used my 4-die Lee set, with the Factory Crimp die adjusted for a medium crimp- it's important to get a secure crimp with lightweight gun that will recoil a lot. I made up 50 loads using an assortment of cases and headed to my club.

My first test was at 20 feet, and everything was on target and centered. I backed up to the 50 foot line, and produced the followed pattern shooting double action:

Not too shabby. There was a bit of flash, but it wasn't too bad. Recoil was snappy- this isn't a gun I'd want to put a few hundred rounds through. But I wasn't working on a plinking load.  reloaded and continued firing:

That's actually 9 shots, by the way. You can see one pair of overlapping holes just above the 9, but the  hole below and to the left is also a double. Looking at this target I decided to stop right there- I think I have my load.