Well, either you misunderstood me or I wasn’t sufficiently clear.
I KNOW that competitors are a small part of the ammo market by numbers. I also know that even though they prob shoot a lot more than your average Fudd, their total consumption is still small compared to, for example, deer hunters. Matter of fact, I didn’t mention competition shooters at all. I did say reloaders
i shot registered skeet for a very long time. Maybe 15 years ago I knew a VP of Remington who shot skeet in the mid-Atlantic region. In response to complaints about the high cost of 28 ga and 410 target ammo, his reply was that it’s such a small market compared to hunting shot shell that they produce the entire year’s worth of 28 ga STS in one week.
Nonetheless, they, Federal, and Winchester still sponsored top skeet competitors w ammo just as Krieghoff and Kolar sponsored them w guns.
And why? Because they know the guy coming to the range looks to these top shooters and tries to emulate what the use. They want to know if Bender shoots 8.5 or 9’s, what chokes Giambrone uses, what length barrel does Armstrong shoot, etc, etc, etc. Competitors and serious shooters (e.g. AAA/AA shooters in skeet) are highly visible and very valuable brand ambassadors.
That’s why the WHAT THE PROS USE articles on Accurate keep getting published and read.
And, IMO, metallic cartridge reloaders also tend to be serious and experienced shooters that others look to emulate.
and even if not, reloaders are still a loyal market segment, who will still be around and buying when all this current foolishness is over, and my opinion is the this they are making a mistake in only releasing primers that are in excess of what they can stuff into a case.
I’m certainly not advocating that the ammo manf prioritize reloaders over finished cartridges production. But they are a market segment and IMO they should be given an allocation of primer production and not just be given the just extra to finished ammo production requirements.
As for my opinions being “incredibly misinformed”, I don’t remember soliciting YOUR opinion about MY opinion. Right? LOL