A chance meeting in the check-out lane

There I was, standing in line waiting until the guy in front of me was finished checking out so the person at the register could go into the "cage" to collect the items I had ordered on-line.

Looking into the guy's cart, I saw that he had a bewildering assortment of center-fire ammunition. Then, looking at the counter where the "associate" was scanning boxes with a bar-code reader, he had even more. Judging by the stacks that I saw, he was buying somewhere between twenty and thirty boxes of ammo.

Venturing a guess I asked "Restocking the deer-camp?"

Shooting me a glance to see if I was actually interested he said "Nope. I am doing a marketing survey to collect honest-to-God prices in stores."

He was a dapper gentleman about three inches shorter than I am and dressed a in quality-but-not-new sweater-vest and "layers" of clothing that would be equally at-home in the woods, the humidor at the local cigar shop or the faculty lounge.

Unlike most people who meet me for the first time, he gave no sign that he noticed my speech-impediment, peg-leg, glass-eye, halitosis, body odor nor the fact that the left side of my face is caved in due to a childhood case of the yaws.

"So, why are you doing that?" I asked.

The Game is Afoot

Cutting to the chase, there are people in high places who are hell-bent on enacting California-like laws that prohibit ammunition made with lead (Pb) bullets. Michigan is one of the states that will be targeted earlier rather than later.

Russ was volun-told to collect data regarding ammo prices from a cross-section of stores. He was given a "market basket" that ranged from Federal Blue-box .243 Winchester to .375 H&H Magnums loaded with TSX bullets. The selections spanned the universe of hunting bullets and all were "high runners" for their respective market niche.

Russ kind of shrugged his shoulders when I mentioned that there was a lot of chaos and working at cross-purposes now days.

He told me "The DNR realizes that almost 1/2 of their budget comes from selling hunting and fishing license and another 1/5th from Pittman-Robertson taxes from the sale of ammunition. They are also very aware of a marketing study done by Southwick and Associates shows that the entry of new hunters and shooters into shooting sports is severely throttled by the high cost of ammunition. It isn't impacting just the wanna-be hunters. It also has a chilling effect on mentors and their ability to provide effective training for the new hunters they are responsible for."

"On the other side, there are people on the Environmental Quality side of the DNR who are thrilled by the idea of tripling or quadrupling the cost of ammo and forcing people to either use lead-free ammo or to simply stop hunting."

"And nobody is talking about lead-free .22LR ammo. What is that going to do to older rifle barrels made from softer steel? Nobody knows. A lot of people either don't care or they see it as a stealth way to get pre-1968 guns out of circulation."

The DNR is cutting their own throats. If they saw a 75% decline in a combination of license sales and Pittman-Roberts funding, they would have to lay-off between 30% and 50% of their work-force. Since they are a Union shop, the lowest seniority workers (the ones working the shittiest jobs) would be laid off and the higher seniority workers would have to be redeployed to fill those undesirable-but-critical jobs and shifts.