I remember seeing somewhere that the gun used to shoot .308 bullets, but was converted to .223. Maybe an implementation of .308 bullets would fix this?
It just doesn't make sense that you can craft the gun but not the ammo. If you're hunting the ghouls for their ammo, you might as well just take their guns too.
Either way, there needs to be a lower tier option for snipers. BB guns are nearly useless, we can't craft pipe rifles (but even if we could they'd be just as useless), and the only option we have at the first profession level, we can't make ammo for.
So either give us .223 ammo at SG lvl 1 or give the hunting rifle a different ammunition type. Either one makes me happy.