Prices will likely level off soon.
Will they come down again??? Who knows.
I spoke with a fellow this afternoon, out of Arizona. He's a snowbird and has opted to stay over the winter.
He belongs to a local club/shooting range close to his property and has made some good friends with a few of the locals.
Really nice fellow. Likes to shoot and gets along well with just about anybody but has an instinctive aversion to politicians/bureaucrats.
I asked him about prices on components in his area.
His reply was "What components, the shelves are mostly empty, unless you can coax the shop owner into digging into his under lock and key stash."
I thought he was joking. He wasn't
Many American shooters are not only wealthy but they shoot huge quantities of ammunition, especially the three gun guys.
50k-100k of factory ammo per year isn't unusual and cost is ignored.
This means they're not only going through 5-10 barrels per year, maybe more and have multiple rifles of the same design on hand to keep a reliable rifle handy at any given time. Same goes for handguns.
Of course, my friend doesn't even try to keep up with that bunch, which are mostly very friendly people. He associates with them, without any difficulty and the odd one keeps trying to get him into the game.
His comment about that was "How do I eat and live after spending $US75K per year on shooting sports?"
It doesn't take a lot of shooters, going through that much factory ammo to deplete the supply, especially when so many Americans are not only buying record numbers of firearms, but stockpiling ammunition.
The manufacturers have ramped up production, but the prices of basic materials, wages, equipment wear and lack of ability to acquire it all has skyrocketed.
I was told that an 8 pound keg of popular powder is going for $US500, in a heartbeat, without blinking an eye or questioning the price.
Most other popular components have risen at a similar rate.
Some folks are searching the stuff out online, purchasing all of the stock on hand and driving out of state with trucks to pick it up and bring it home to squirrel away.
In such a market, guess who gets first bite on the worm??
I was in Del Selin's shop last week and there seems to be a pretty decent supply of powder/components/factory ammo/firearms etc.
Prices have gone up accordingly, but not by any extreme amount.
Del was on the ball enough to put in large orders, which gets the attention of manufacturers and has been able to bring in a steady supply throughout this recent drought.
There are some powders and bullets that he can't get at this point, but for what most folks are looking for, he's got. Lots of one off stuff as well.
Shooting/collecting is no longer a poor mans sport. Even rimfire shooters are feeling the pinch.
I notice that even the scrap brass buckets at our local range are mostly empty, even on the pistol range. Unusual. About the only cases being left behind are Berdan primed or rimfire.
OP, you can only afford to shoot, as much as your budget allows.
Family, mortgages, bills, food, etc come first.
All of the money dumped into our economy over the past couple of years was a boon to a lot of people and may have saved many from bankruptcy. The thing is, it's created a very unhealthy inflationary environment for the future.
I'm retired, no debt, own my own house, etc. I've never lived an ostentatious lifestyle, other than during my first marriage, for a very short time. I live a very comfortable lifestyle, in a lovely setting, within a half hour of some of the best hunting and fishing areas in BC.
I have enough stuff on hand to last the duration of my life and I hunt/fish/shoot more than most. I'm not feeling the pinch at all.
I've been where you're at though, so I know how it feels.
For the newbies and financially strapped folks out there, that would like to get into the shooting sports, now is not a good time to start.
Over the last ten years, I've heard more people going on about how they're going to get such and such a firearm, when their father/grandfather passes. Most don't even realize they need a license to aquire that firearm and ammo, if there is any.
The drought will end. Whether prices will drop or not is anyone's guess.
IMHO, we're going to see a lot more innovation over the next decade as to the traditional components used to make ammunition/firearms become to expensive to maintain profit margins and still stay within normal budgets.
Not only to bring the cost of the goods down but because of lack of availability of the materials used in them.
The new advances in electric vehicles alone is going to drive up the costs of everything that contains, graphite/copper/tin/zinc/antimony , etc.
So I don't expect to see the cost of anything included in our sport coming down soon.
My advice is, if it's available and you can afford it, buy it. Buy as much as you can afford, without imposing on family.
If you have to go without a carton of smokes/ couple of cases of beer/ bottle/ blow/ weed for a couple of months, whatever you spend on ammo/components will just be money in the bank, instead of pizzing away or polluting the air.