If I turn up at our small local clay shoot with a 2 1/2” 12 bore they may or may not have 2 1/2” (65 mm) cartridges on sale so I now make sure I have a couple of boxes in the car. They generally have 12, 20 and .410 on sale although the .410 varies between 2 1/2” and 3” (all fibre wads as it is a “Fibre wads only” shoot).
Generally no problem in buying what you want, lead is still freely available and Just Cartridges will deliver to our doors.
What does surprise me, however, is the level of bidding at Southams and Holts on slabs of shotgun cartridges. Given the uncertainty of age and storage conditions before being put into the sales, and the fact that cartridges have to be collected from the auctioneers there seems to be little margin between prices realised at auction and retail prices.
