I don't know about you, but I pretty much quit shooting .22 rimfire ammo during the worst of the ammo crunch. I never ran out of .22 ammo, nor did I intend to do so if I could help it. So I just hoarded my meager supply of rimfire ammo and used it only for serious purposes like hunting small game and dispatching varmints around the homestead. For plinking, short range target shooting and most other purposes for which .22s are popular, I used .38 Special.
"What?" I hear you saying; "But they are even more expensive, and were also not always readily available!"
True. Unless you reload. Granted, reloading components became difficult to find too, but not as difficult as .22 rimfire ammo. The exception was the fast pistol/ shotgun powder that is most useful for cheap .38 reloads, but I had a few pounds of Red Dot, Bullseye and a couple other fast powders. Since the average standard velocity .38 load uses 3.5 grains or less of these types of powders, that equates to 2,000 or more rounds per pound of powder. I had a reasonable supply of primers too, and I had better luck finding more primers than finding .22 ammo. There were times when I couldn't find any rimfire ammo at all, but I don't remember ever being unable to find primers. As for bullets, they were always at least somewhat available too; but even better, I cast my own bullets. Lead never became the slightest bit difficult to find, so that meant I always had as many bullets as I needed.
Better still, I have a small shooting range on my property and can dig expended bullets out of the backstop to melt and cast into new bullets.
So what are we looking at, price-wise? Now that .22 rimfire is becoming somewhat readily available again, I find most of it going for 10-12 cents per round. Occasionally I find "loss-leader" type .22 ammo for around 6 cents per round.
Let's be realistic. Even before the ammo crunch, most varieties of .22 rimfire ammo (not including .22 Magnum, which is much more expensive) were around 10 cents per round. Probably most of the bulk of .22 ammo sold was about half that price, but that's just because the average person bought the cheapest loss-leader ammo they could find. But if you bought .22 ammo based upon some attribute other than price, you probably had to pay 10 or more cents per round. At the time of this writing, .22 ammo availability in my area is such that the single-box, 10+ cents per round ammo is in stock most places. The only thing that is not readily available is the loss leader, bulk pack ammo; and even that is sporadically available.
So what does that have to do with .38 Special, you ask? Simply this: even at mid-panic prices, it was possible to purchase enough components (including bullets) to keep oneself supplied with .38 Special ammo at approximately the price of standard, non-loss-leader .22 ammo. And as it stands right now, I have found primers for $16 per thousand, powder for $17 per pound, and lead for a couple of dollars per pound. That means that even if I were starting today with nothing more than some empty .38 Special cases and some rudimentary reloading and bullet casting equipment, I could produce my own loaded .38 Special ammo for about seven cents per round. If I got out there and dug the lead out of my backstop or scrounged free lead some other way, I could reduce the cost per round to about 2-1/2 cents. That is a buck and a quarter per 50-round box, or $25 per thousand!
Yes, you read that right: less than half the price of the cheapest loss-leader .22 ammo!
Did I hear you say that you aren't yet set up to reload your own .38s? If so, here are some links to get you started: .38 Special bullet diameter: .358" lead bullets, .357" jacketed. Primers: Small Pistol standard. Load data: http://www.reloadammo.com/38loads.htm Here's a good source of bullets, powder and primers: http://www.grafs.com/
And a video tutorial: https://youtu.be/ugwBzVUhqow
