Po Boy Logistics: Picking up the brass -- and going through the trash.
"Yeah, but is there any BRASS in there?"
There are a lot of new shooters out there these days and I've noticed that many of them are not yet savvy enough to harvest their own brass. In the past week, I have dropped by one of my local shooting ranges four times -- partly because other business has taken me close to there during the day. You have to time it right, since a lot of folks -- including one paid to do so by the range authorities -- also harvest this spot for brass. But this week has been a particularly good one.
Daily hauls were: 451, 254, 92 & 497, for a total of 1,294. The breakdown by calibers is as follows, in no particular order:
.223/5.56 Qty 285
9mm NATO Qty 260
.30 Carbine Qty 46
.38 Special Qty 202
.30-30 Qty 23
.30-06 (USGI & Greek once-fires) Qty 58
.270 Qty 11
.218 Bee Qty 9
25-06 Qty 4
.45 ACP Qty 154
.40 S&W Qty 154
.380 Qty 65
.243 Qty 3
.32 S&W Long Qty 20
(This doesn't count the high-brass shotshell hulls that I pick up in anticipation of when we begin casting our own slugs.) Anything we don't load will be traded for other brass that we do. The score would have been better but one day the 55 7.62 NATOs I picked up proved to be Berdan-primed. I put them in the scrap box for the recycler. I can't say I almost wept, but I did groan.
Like I said, this was an unusually good week, but the haul made it worth the gas money to check the range. I also go through the trash cans at this range, and some of the brass I find there among the used targets, soda bottles and half-eaten McDonald's. Nasty? Yes. That's why nobody else seems to do it. But I also routinely find empty boxes to put the reloaded fodder in, and, occasionally, bandoleers, stripper clips, etc. Every trip there's always at least a few range pickups of loaded rounds, some showing damage from "failure to feed" while others are pristine. These are stripped down with a bullet puller for usable brass and bullets. NEVER TRUST A LOADED ROUND RANGE PICKUP! I recently found 33 5.56 reloads, apparently pristine, in a plastic range box at the bottom of one of the trash cans. When my friend and reloading buddy stripped them down, he discovered them to be reloads of horrible quality. One even had mixed ball with stick powders! That's a kaboom waiting to happen, which may have been why I found the rest of the guy's ammo in the trash can. I hope nobody got hurt, but hey, I ended up with 33 perfectly good cases and 33 perfectly good projectiles. Again, never trust a loaded round range pickup. Never.
In any case, it is obvious that, as my Grandpa Nace taught me long ago, one man's trash is another man's treasure. And, as long as you don't get embarrassed being seen going through the trash, you can find some pretty useful things now and again.
8 comments:
I reload the Berdan primed brass. You can get the decapper and the primers from Grafs. You really don't need the decapper though as a semi sharp punch can be used to pop out the primers. There is plenty of advice on the web.
Many ranges now have employees sweep up brass left behind, and post signs that theft of brass will be prosecuted. But yeah, you can still pick up your own, as well as a few odds and ends.
If you shoot at a range where you can stuff up, by all means, do so.
The ranges I usually go to are in the National Forest, they are free to go to and there are no employees to patrol for brass. LOTS of great finds there over the years, tens of thousands of empty shells saved for reloading. Quite a handful of live rounds, mostly .22s that rolled off the table. Bandoliers, a couple magazines, stripper clips, even a couple ammo crates tossed in the garbage there.
One time, I frequented a range in SW Virginia, an indoor range, that collected their brass and you weren't allowed to take it back. In a show of disagreement with this policy, one day I noticed that all their range brass was collected in 5-gallon plastic buckets that were lime green in color. One day I went to the range, with all my range ammo, targets, etc. packed in my own lime green 5-gallon pail that I found in a dumpster near the house. I went to the range, shot my couple boxes of ammo, and when I left I sneakily packed the little gear I had remaining in THEIR lime green bucket (LOADED with fired brass) and left behind mine. Noone was the wiser. I don't encourage this kind of guerilla brass theft, as I kind of lucked out in them not noticing it. But sneaky tactics like this get us ready and trained for the day when MORE sneaky tactics will have to be used against different folks...
Interesting gizmo I see used from time to time is I believe called a Holt's Nut Wizard. I intend to get one soon. Activity at our range is still down due to the lack of ammo.
Damn right; pick it up if you can. Go out in those backroads and dig em up then use TarnX to clean em for a first pass. As an aside I was forced to go to chinamart yesterday to get some stuff so I walked by the ammo case. At least 10-15 boxes of 30-30, 30-06, 243, some mauser sizes, 7mm's and shot of all sizes up the kazoo. No rimfire, hand rounds, or 223/5's or 7.62's. Appears that in my neck of the woods everyone intends to be doing zombie work or something.
Arkindole
For Berdan primed stuff, I think hydraulic decapping is the way to go.
Just get a piece of drill rod that barely fits down the neck, set the case in a hole in a 2x4 (with a smaller hole all the way through for the primers to fall through), fill the case 3/4 full of water, drop the rod in and whack it with a hammer.
Yes, it's messy but it costs nothing.
At the academy where I used to go for gun training, it was customary to call a halt after every relay finished firing, to let the shooters scrounge the brass. We 1911-shooters were the worst of the lot, I admit, but the rest were out there picking up brass too.
Maddawg308,
My answer to ranges that won't let me police my brass is to shoot a revolver. I empty each cylinder directly into my range bag.
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