I happened to be at my “neighborhood” reloading shop yesterday. (It’s actually far away in my home state and as far as I know there’s no reloading shop anywhere near me in Colorado.). I normally plan far ahead for my needs and only load low pressure light loads for my 16 bore SxS’s. I phone them fairly regularly to see what might have come in and on my word they slowly build a box in the back for me and my next trip home. The real “treasure” this time was a 4lb jar of International that they didn’t know they had but found and held for me in my box.
95% of what I shoot calls for DR16’s and they are long gone and no one seems to know if they’ll ever come back. So I bit the bullet this trip and bought a bunch of old stock CB 7/8’s and I’ll start the transition to a Cheerio/Lima bean 3/4 oz load. Hopefully CB keeps this wad in production but for us 16ga vintagers the future doesn’t look bright regarding wads.
After I got on the road some Ched 209’s came in so I also committed to a few boxes of those since their availability is so spotty.
And lastly I bought 3 bags of 8’s not because I need them but because Lawrence is already $50 and they’ve been told the next batch will be even more.
I say all this to say that, in the short term, it seems that reloading components are starting to trickle through. But the long look is different. My shop friends tell me confidentially that shotgun is a small side gig for them. It’s the pistol and long range rifle guys that keep them in business as well as some gun sales. And they look for shotgun components to disappear from their inventory (although 12ga will probably be around much longer than the rest.)
I’m not a high volume shooter (ave 200 rounds/month) so if/when that happens, the RST’s of the world, if they’re still around, won’t be an option for me because of price. But until then, I’m going to keep chasing components and pulling the MEC handle so that in rotation all my old but still lovely (SxS) ladies can get out for some regular exercise.
Last edited by FallCreekFan; 07/12/21 10:15 AM.
