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As someone who occasionally works behind a gunstore counter, I'm going to advise you to be suspicious of such rumors. Another rumor is the "surge" that was planned for Iraq was expected to require a major manufactures to commit a large amount of their capacity to providing ammunition to the goverment. This also was expected to significantly raise prices. One of the few hard facts affecting the industry is prices for copper and lead all jumped. Also, the cost for fuel has been going up.

Copper as you know is a primary raw material for brass casings and guilding metal for jacketed bullets. If copper prices go up, expected the cost of ammunition to go up too. Copper prices in particular jumped significantly in the last few months. Copper prices got high enough that thieves were willing to steal the wiring from live phone and power circuits as well as A/C and plumbing systems in occupied buildings.

And then of course there is the cost of freight. Fuel prices have been rising of late. That means whether you ship by plane, train or truck, it costs more to move product. Increased costs in logistics are almost always passed on to the customer. If most raw materials reached the end user by rail, fuel prices might not have quite as significant and affect on consumers. But, most stuff actually enters the store, manufacturing facility or warehouse by truck these days. Relative to the weight of cargo, increases in fuel costs have a much greater affect on the cost of shipping by truck than by train.

Now if the guy were to offer reasons like that, I'd be more inclined to believe him. But when a random guy working the counter at (your favorite retailer) tells you his friend at Winchester (whom you don't know from a whole in the wall) says prices will go up 50%, I'd wonder about the accuracy of the statement. FWIW, I actually recently heard ammo prices were expected to stabilize and possibly even go back down a slightly because copper prices supposedly stopped skyrocketing. I don't keep track of the markets so I can't verify that one either.