The great ammo shortage of 2013 isn’t news to many of you, gone are the days where you could walk into your local gun shop and pick up a few bricks of .22lr for a weekend of plinking. Our sister blog AOD recently discussed the ammo shortage of 2013 and the grim reality that we may not see things get back to normal for quite some time. While ammo may be coming back into stock in some parts of the country, calibers such as .22lr, 9mm and .223/5.56 are still almost impossible to find as manufacturers work 24/7 to pump out more ammo. Many of us are hitting the range less and less these days, sometimes not at all. Shooting is a perishable skill, it takes regular practice and that takes ammo. How can you get any trigger time when the shelves are bare of almost all calibers? Here’s a few methods I’ve been using to find ammo.

You can try using the Wal-Mart smartphone app to check your local store’s stock every so often, and hope they still have it by the time you get there. This has been hit or miss for me. There’s also Ammo-Can.net which shows the ammo inventory of Wal-Marts nationwide, also hit or miss last time I used it, but still worth a shot. The best method for snagging ammo at your local Wal-Mart or gun shop is to get there early and hope there’s anything left by time you’re at the front of the line.

Your best bet to finding ammo is searching for it online, but that’s also quite difficult these days. Before you could have gone to your favorite online retailer and ordered a case of ammo no problemo, and it was actually pretty cheap too. These days you have to be on top of your game and quick with your credit card in hopes to find anything online. A while back I put together this list of online ammo sources during the midst of the great panic buying spree of 2013.

These days the best way to find ammo online is by using one of the various online ammo search engines like GunBot.net or AmmoEngine.com. They scour all the various online ammo retailers and display their ammo inventories and prices in real-time. It’s tough, but with a little work you’ll be able to find ammo and still be able to hit the range. Got any ammo hunting tips of your own? Let us know below!

[Image Source: Sportsmansguide.com]

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