Steve Knight

In my lifetime I have gone from buying shotgun ammunition by the shell (and on credit) to by the box, to buying a 20-box case then buying a 10-box case and possibly back to buying it by the box.

Maybe only in the world of bird hunting would the good old days be just a year ago.

Sticker shock is something usually reserved for the automobile industry, but for any hunter who hasn't been in a store since last fall, you better be prepared before getting ready for dove season.

"Basically you can figure whatever you paid last year and double it," said Barry Clark of Tyler's Gander Mountain store. "The cheap stuff last year was $3.99 and we are at $6.99."

The increased cost is across the board -- shotgun shells, rifle and pistol ammunition -- but because of the volume used (the average hunter shoots about seven rounds per dove) bird hunters will feel the most pain.

The news only gets worse. The price Clark mentioned is for 1 1/8-ounce 12-gauge or 1- or 7/8th-ounce so-called promotional dove loads. For the slightly better 1 1/4-ounce 12-gauge shells the price is going to be closer to $10 a box. And that isn't all.

"Some of the high brass stuff is nearly $30 a box," he said. Those shooting 28-gauge or a .410 are getting a bargain if they can find it at $10 a box. Most brands are going to be in the $13 to $16 range.

And another price increase is expected Sept. 1, following up on one that most manufacturers pushed along in June.

"We are getting price increases every quarter and have for the last 18 months and it is not 2 to 3 percent. It has been 12 to 15 percent on average per quarter," said Clark, who has grown up in the firearms business in Tyler, but is still awed by the current happenings within the industry.

But hunters have to be careful when buying the promotional loads. Clark warns that hunters using a semi-automatic shotgun might want to shy away from the promotional loads because they don't eject well. The shells will be OK in a pump, over/under and side-by-side, even though they don't shoot as clean and are likely to foul the barrel more.

The rise in prices has most hunters looking at alternatives.

Reloading continues to be an option for those who want to load high-quality shells. If a hunter already has a reloader, reloading shells can save 50 to 70 percent off retail prices.

Hunters aren't going to save enough, however, when comparing reloading to promotional dove loads. The reason is that 25-pound bags of shot that retailed for about $20 a year ago are selling for $50 this summer as the worldwide demand for metal continues to grow.

In this instance, the wholesale cost has climbed so high that some smaller gun shops have abandoned the reloading business.

Another alternative is foreign-made shells. Competition shooters have been using imports for years, and many of those manufacturers are starting to find the American hunting market. Rio, a Spanish-made shell, experienced a set of serious price increases a year ago, but hasn't gone up as much as some of the domestic brands in 2008.

"Our retail in dove loads should be six-something a box," said Patrick Thomas, national sales manager for the company. "It is going to be creeping up to around $10 for an ounce and a quarter."

Thomas said the biggest jump came in 2007 when the price of lead for a shot spiked at about $4,000 a ton. It has since come down, but the price of other components as well as shipping has increased.

The result is that the wholesale price for Rio shells is up about 40 percent from last year.

Rio is better known in Europe than in the United States. Believed to be the largest shotgun shell manufacturer in the world, Thomas said the company produced and sold more than 500 million rounds last year from its two plants in Spain and one in England. The 100-year-old company has been in the United States since 2002.

"Where we really have a base here would be with gun clubs. That is where we took off," Thomas said. Since adding a more complete line of hunt shells, he said the company has moved more into retail stores, but not the big box outlets.

Mac's Gun Shop in Tyler is a Rio dealer. It is selling the company's dove loads for $70 a case, a $10 increase from last season.

Store owner Mark McBride expects the price to hold during the season unless sales are too good.

"When we sell out there will be another price increase, so it will be going up," he warns.

"It is hard to say where it is going to be 120 days out from now," Thomas added. "With a lot of (the components) being commodities, it moves a lot faster."

Where the climb will stop, no one knows. The use of lead in ammo is a small blip on the demand radar. However, while no one expects it to have reached its peak, a slowdown in the world's economy could send prices down in the future. The chance of that happening is probably about as good as me being able to buy individual shells again.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE: No matter what brand or quality of shotgun shell a hunter likes, they are going to cost about twice what they did last season.
(Staff Photo By Steve Knight)