It got me remembering another time.

In the late 70's my buddy and I, along with two friends took a road trip from West Yellowstone to Stanford, a small town near Great Falls, Montana to hunt birds. We had a guide friend who farmed wheat there and had a bunkhouse for us. He kindly made some phone calls and we had endless land to hunt for a few days. The hunting was great, with pheasants and huns in almost every draw you walked through. They had all you can eat breakfasts at the diner in Stanford, so they got tired of seeing our faces after a couple days.

The last day of hunting, we rolled up to an abandoned farm with a tree row next to the house. We had permission to hunt there and saw hundreds of pheasants run into the tree row when we pulled in. It was obvious to the four of us that we were almost out of money and shotgun shells. On the hood of my Scout, everybody emptied their pockets and we counted the shells and the money. We had to buy gas to get back home, and we only had so many shells between all of us. We split the shells we had amongst us and shot a few more roosters out of the tree row, and got on the road because we had just enough money for gas to get back to West Yellowstone. As I remember, a box of duck/pheasant loads were about $3.50 and I can't even remember how cheap gas was, but you get the point.

For so many years afterwards, I laughed to myself as I had a garage full of shotgun shells, and not so many birds to shoot.

Just thought I'd share.

Pete

Nice read

That reminded me of a story too, although not about ammo.

I had just turned 12 years old. The state of NY had also just lowered the legal hunting age to 12 years old, so this fall would be the first fall I could hunt. It was about this time of year. I decided to go walk through the overgrown old vineyard my grandfather owned that we hunted pheasants in each fall with my dog, just to see if there were any pheasants around. My dog wasn't a hunting dog, just my old faithful yard lab. Anyhow, I'd been walking for awhile and had kicked out one rooster. I was making my way back towards home and had one little patch of cover to go through yet. I walked into it with my dog slightly ahead of me and the whole field just erupted in pheasants! I don't know how many were there but I know it was over 50. Pheasants everywhere, the air was just filled with them! I had never seen anything like it, before or since.

I remember this days, up around Lockport

Sounds like good problems to have !!

I remember a time in my early 20's. I scraped up $3.00 from my pockets and floor of truck. A box of shotgun shells, or a 6pack of Hamm's? Hmmm...? I bought the shells. A chronic shortage of cash, and periodic shortage of female companionship were about the only problems I had back then. Life was pretty good!

In 1980 everybody went to Hecks and bought12 ga. winchester high brass 6's for 3.88 a box. was like that for several years then Hecks closed.

Ha! Buy a case of 20 GA every year for quail season, I'd pay 10 times what they cost if I could shoot that many at quail every year! My family's farm in Northern Missouri is some of the most prime whitetail deer hunting ground in the midwest and I'd gladly trade every deer with antlers on it for quail. First 3 or 4 pheasants I ever killed where around there, haven't seen a pheasant in that county in years.

I can remember back in my teens being flush with cash. The fur market was great and having a job at 14 didn’t hurt either.

Ahhh those were the days.

I bought my 30-06 when I was 14 , bought a box of super-x every time I got paid , 7.00 a box of 20.
when the hardware store ran out of them they re-ordered and the price went up to 11 dollars.

I kick myself a little for not continuing to buy a box every time I got paid at 11.00 but at the time a 37% increase seemed like a lot , little did I know that was the cheapest I was ever going to see them again.