Kyle grew up with guns.
The 39-year-old Palmer resident said that he has been shooting since he was eight.
Cahill is an avid hunter. He is a member of the Air National Guard. He thinks it's a part of the service to stay proficient with firearms.
That has gotten harder recently. Alaska is in the midst of a drastic shortage of bullets. The shortage has been slightly less severe in the past few months, but nearly every kind of cartridge is harder to come by than it was before the Pandemic hit. If you can't find them.
The shortage means bare shelves in sporting goods stores, price gouging on secondary markets, hunters going into the field with just a few cartridges, and uncertainty about when or if the situation will return to the way things were.
Readers were asked to describe their experiences with the shortage. Several dozen people responded. He was target-shooting with pistols at an indoor range on a weekday. The facility had the feel of a locker room for a hockey team, with old-timers grinning and reminiscing about their weapons, as spent shell casings rolled below the furniture.
He tries to put in range time every week to keep sharp for his Guard duties but also because he loves ballistics.
I love shooting and the physics behind it. He said he loved the psychology behind it. You have to control yourself when you have a gun. I shoot if I'm hungry. Being sad affects how I shoot.
The range regulars have changed their shooting habits. The concussive reports of the handguns are more deliberate and measured.
"We are no longer dropping full magazines of bullets," he said. We were able to shoot conservatively.
Modifications may be seen as a minor annoyance for consumers, or as a market correction from panic buying and fear-mongering that have driven gun sales to record highs in the last two years. Many Alaskans are close to firearms because of ideology, vocation or because of the food they harvest, but the shortages are changing their relationship to guns.
It's just crazy as crazy can be.
It's not clear why it's been harder to get a gun. There are a number of factors that have contributed to the shortages Alaskans have experienced in the last two years.
There has been a huge increase in gun sales. The presidential election, the racial justice protests, and the pandemic are all cited as reasons. According to background check data submitted to the FBI, gun purchases rose steeply during 2020 and 2021, driven largely by first-time buyers.
The country's oldest firearms company went through a Chapter 11 reorganization in the middle of 2020 as consumer demands for high-quality firearms and bullets began to decline. The company's manufacturing plants are running at full capacity, despite the huge back-up.
State Department sanctions prevented Russia from exporting bullets. When American-made rounds were scarce, the country's low-quality rounds could be bought cheaply in bulk.
"Manufacturers ramp us as fast as they can, but as long as people are buying and storing this stuff out of fear, it just compounds the issue," said Dave Squier, a firearms instructor in Alaska who has had trouble procuring enough handgun ammunition for his classes.
Squier said that while he is starting to see a little bit more regularity in the supply of calibers like 9mm and.223, which are popular among hard-core and high-volume shooters, prices have increased significantly.
VF Grace is a wholesale supplier that acts as a middleman for the shipments of bullets for stores in Alaska.
"There's no shortage of bullets, just not in the store where most consumers are used to buying them," chuckled Harrington, explaining that vast quantities are stashed in people's closets, garage and gun safes.
More people are trying to get into reloading because of the frustration of not being able to buy online or in stores. That has created a bigger demand for things like gunpowder, primers and brass.
"It's crazy as crazy can be," he said.
His company's gunpowder orders went up by 750% in 2020 compared to the last relatively normal year for his business. They've tripled so far this year.
There are a few options for getting into Alaska. It comes with restrictions on transportation along overland routes through Canada. There are options for bulk shipments that are already booked up.
It's much simpler down south. You can put it in a truck and drive it. The barges are full of food and things we need to operate.
He said that flying in large quantities is costly and restrictive.
"Not a lot of relief in the supply chain," Squier said.
It has affected how much people shoot.
The shortage of supply cut across all types of bullets, from shotgun shells for skeet shooting to the low-velocity.22 rounds used for training.
"I know we'll run out before the season ends," said Deana.
On a recent afternoon, teenage biathletes practiced firing from the prone position at targets 50 meters downrange at a park in Anchorage, as the temperature was cold.
"We were in a situation last winter where we were short of supply and we had to use bullets and pebbles to hit the targets," he said. We're going to end up in the same situation this winter.
The club has grown over the last few years, but enthusiasm waned when participants couldn't practice with a gun. When supplies are low, athletes shoot less and save bullets for competition. If someone gets a lead on where to buy a brick of the right rounds, families text each other. Overall, it makes the sport less enjoyable.
Zechariah Meyer, executive director of the Birchwood Recreation and Shooting Park, said that it has affected how much people shoot. You're a little more reserved when you can't find it.
Meyer said that there's still plenty of bullets out there, but that people are putting more time, money and effort into tracking down supplies for gun enthusiasts who use the range a lot.
Meyer said, "You hear someone unload a machine gun and you think, 'Oh man, that was expensive.'
It's affecting things in a big way.
There are hunters in Alaska who need the right bullets. Dozens of readers from Klawok to Kasilof, to Kodiak to Ketchikan, to Mekoryuk shared stories of not being able to find the caliber of bullets they needed to hunt animals for food. They were running too low to sight hunting rifles.
Thomas James from Klawok wrote that he had almost nothing to hunt with. On opening day, I had three bullets between my rifles. I was able to bring home the bacon, but now I'm bullet-less.
Todd Bergman, who lives in Sitka and hunts deer in the islands of Southeast each fall, said that he hasn't been able to buy bullets here for almost two years. "I gave up."
Bergman said that the shelves in all of the four stores that sell bullets in Sitka are almost bare. One recently had a single box of.308s, but it cost $65, which was triple the normal price.
Big-box stores along the Railbelt face more constraints than the remote communities at the tail-end of Alaska's supply chain. Bergman worked in the Bush before moving to Sitka and said that close friends in Aniak and New Stuyahok went into hunting season with just a few big-game rifles.
Bergman said that the biggest thing was doing things differently. He and his son hunted with a deer rifle to conserve rounds.
Many rural stores took steps to make sure local hunters had enough rounds to eat, in comparison to the last time there was a shortage.
The head of the distribution center for the Alaska Native Industries Cooperative Association said that they buy all they can to make sure the villages have it. A lot of the villages want more.
The years-long scarcity has changed Bergman's family rhythms. They don't take.22s on camping trips to give kids practice plinking since the cartridges are hard to find. One of his sons is a bow hunter.
Bergman said that he got crossbow certified two years ago.
I think it's affecting things in a big way.
I'll never run short until I die.
The biggest factor sustaining the deficit is profiteering. The frenzy over scarce ammo has led many to just buy whatever they can if it's available, independent of need, like a wildfire that is hot enough to make its own weather patterns.
Many people contacted for the story said that private ammunition stockpiles are one reason it is hard to find the weapons.
After a close friend passed away, a man in Alaska acquired a cache of firearms, reloading supplies and bullets. At 67 years old, the passionate hunter and outdoorsman said it's a bigger arsenal than he could ever use.
"I will never run short until I die," he said. The shortage has not affected me.
As the inheritor of a modest depot, Daly's situation is unique. Chunks of bullets in Alaska are not. If you look at Anchorage auction houses, you will see that they handle estates that include thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo broken down into small lots and sold off at prices driven up by eager bidders.
Jeremy Smith, who opened The Arms Room in North Pole earlier this year, said that 90 percent of his weapons are private. It is so difficult and costly to get the Cartridges from the manufacturers that the vast majority of the ammunition he buys, stocks and resells is from individuals.
He bought 50,000 rounds from a soldier who was moving out of state. All of it sold in two hours.
The secondary market, where opportunist buyers are buying and selling at inflated prices, is what irks Smith the most.
He said that it was a shitty thing to do.
He's seen it with people who buy small amounts of inventory, only to find it popping up in online exchanges or social media markets immediately afterwards, like a man who stocked up on reloading supplies and then had to sell them for several times the price at a trade show.
Smith said that half of the products on his table were bought in his shop.
There is a social responsibility that is part and parcel of owning firearms, a civic-mindedness that makes room for others in the shooting community. He believes that profiteering and Hoarding occur at the expense of others.
When a young guy or woman wants to shoot and they can't find the right gun, what happens? Or a hunter?
He thinks that the shift from guns to something else is related to the shortage of bullets.
"There's not a shooting culture anymore, there's an owner culture," he said.
Emily Messner is a reporter for the Daily News.
