What is with the scarcity of ammo in RE4 (2005)?

Is it just me or is ammo just hard to come by in this game? And only this game. I wanted to get through the original before I played the remake. It hardly appears and when you have it you burn through it incredibly fast. Enemy encounters are ambushes of 4 to 5 every couple of feet it seems like. You would think the merchant would sell it but nope. I get this is a survival game and you have to conserve resources but damn it seems incredibly unfair and lopsided. I haven’t even made it out of the village yet and I already feel I won’t be able to complete this game because I’m going to get stuck somewhere where I don’t have any damn bullets.