RHINELANDER, WI (WSAU-WXPR) — When the pandemic started a year and a half ago, there were shortages of everything from toilet paper to baking supplies.
Most of those shortages have subsided over time, but not the gun ammunition shortage. And the manager of one Northwoods gun shop says it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Chris Turk is the manager of Hodag Guns and Loan.
“It’s a nationwide shortage,” Chris Turk of Hodag Guns and Loan tells WXPR Radio in Rhinelander. “The manufacturers are always going to make ammunition to meet the demand of certain calibers before they switch over all the machinery to make other calibers, so with the high demand ever since after COVID first started, this has never gone away.”
For many who were looking to stock up before the start of the nine-day gun deer season, the shortage caught them off their guard. Turk says if you didn’t plan ahead, you likely didn’t get what you were looking for. “Some people realize what was coming, but people who pick up the rifle once a year were caught with their pants down so to speak.”
In addition to being hard to find, most ammunition is also more expensive.
Turk adds it’s hard to say when the market will return to pre-pandemic levels.
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