Anchorage Hunters Struggling Amid Ammo Shortage

Here’s more from the Anchorage Daily News about what appears to be an ammunition shortage in hunting-dependent Alaska:

Raised in Alaska, Cahill is an avid hunter. He served for years in the military and is now part of the state’s Air National Guard. He views it as a part of that service to stay proficient with firearms, something he calls “a perishable skill.”

But that’s gotten harder recently. Alaska, like much of the country, is in the midst of a drastic ammunition shortage. Though the shortage has eased slightly in the past few months, nearly every kind of cartridge is harder to come by than it was before the pandemic hit in 2020. If you can find them at all.

What the shortage means for Alaskans is bare shelves in sporting goods stores, price gouging on secondary markets, hunters going into the field with just a few cartridges, fewer rounds fired at ranges by professionals and hobbyists alike, and uncertainty about when or if the situation will revert to the way things were.