I had exactly fifteen rounds of my favorite commercial .44 Special in my possession. That’s five in the gun and ten in speed loaders. It was looking bad for our heroes.
Oh, I could still reload – except that early in the Panic I learned to my horror that the two bricks of primers I thought I could fall back on had been stored (badly) so long that they were no longer first-strike dependable. That ironically kind of made them better for practice ammo, since now we’re throwing in random misfire drills. But it was not a good look if I had to fall back on reloads for every day carry.
By either synchronicity or wild coincidence, the only ammo counter in the crappy little desert town nearest where I live started buying up whatever they could get, and in my darkest hour that included a couple of thousand large pistol primers. At horribly inflated price, but since primers have up till now been unavailable at any price I jumped on them. Didn’t buy them all up, because that’s a dick move, but I did get 500 and then 500 more the next week. If any are left tomorrow I’ll be tempted.
And since I already have quite a lot of jacketed bullets in reserve, voilà!
I loaded and tested 20 yesterday, and then whipped up a box-worth this morning after morning walkie. I have quite a lot of once-fired .44 Magnum brass I’ve kept for just this occasion, so I shouldn’t have to worry about split cases. My .44 Special practice brass is getting pretty experienced.
Sometimes the gods smile on us. May more good fortune befall you.
15 rounds of .44? Geese, I was panicking at being down to 450 rounds of .357… That sure is cutting it close, considering the times we are living in.
At the height of the latest sure, sometime late 2020, I saw some 308 hog hammers at the academy. They had half a dozen boxes. I asked the counter guy for 2, and he cocked his head at me an said “You can buy 3.”. I told him,”but I only need 2, and this way someone else can get some.” He actually gave me the sign of the cross and said bless you. Given how messed up it was for those guys around then I’m almost sure he was being serious.