Brass everywhere

Unique,

I live in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona (southeast Phoenix). When I go to the desert to shoot at two popular areas, like many other people, I am amazed at how much brass I find. Based on this, you would never know there are any shortages. Many shooters who reload pick up their brass so this would account for the lack of a shortage.

These areas are in public lands but not managed by anyone so the sad part is the amount of junk people take for targets which they leave. A few years ago, at one of these areas, someone hauled, and left for someone else to pick up, one of those 1970s rear projection televisions. You may remember the ones with the large red, green and blue projection gizmos in the back. We're not talking about something to place on a desk but a huge one.





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Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
 
Yep. Crazy. And I bet people haul all kinds of crap out there. And yes I remember seeing some of those projector screens. That was back in the day.
 
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Bucksnort1
That mess of people taking things out like tvs and computers and garbage to shoot at will end soon someday. We had the exact same thing here in Colorado in the Pawnee National Grasslands. People had destroyed sections of it in no time. Now there are laws about what you can bring for targets etc., and I actually am glad, because it was becoming a very disgusting junk yard, very quickly. I mean, it was fun to have no rules, but when everything looked like a wasteland, it was time for it to end.
 
Lugerstew,

Before moving to Arizona in 2016, I lived in southwest unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado near the intersection of south Wadsworth and C-470 (would love to go back but it is what it is). One of my favorite camping and shooting locations is the area about half-way between Deckers and Woodland Park literally just off Douglas County Highway 67 to the west (I think it is 67). It's in the Pike National Forest.

About two years before leaving, a man was killed by a stray bullet. He was in an area on the east side of 67 a fair distance from this shooting area. I don't know if the incident was solved but it did prompt Pike NF to make changes in this shooting area, which is good. Now, you must shoot in designated areas.

As I said, I would go to this area and stay a night or two after shooting and or collecting brass. What I found interesting is in the evening when shooters departed and after a day of a lot of shooting, mule deer would wander through the shooting lanes as if nothing happened.

Also, it irritated me when shooters would attach targets to trees. These trees would eventually fall from being shot so much. One good thing about the desert is there are no trees on which to attach targets, depending on altitude. The exception to this is the Saguaro (pronounced Sah war woah) cactus but they are not usually in the shooting areas. For those who aren't familiar with these, they are the ones that grow very tall and have spindly arms and lots of spiney sticky things that hurt when you bump into them.

Not to brag but I try to be a good citizen and take home more trash than I took.
 
Saw the Starline brass comment by S9 and Uncle Nick, so I thought I'd add this, and it's an old reminiscence of mine:

A few years ago, I would go out to our local range on a certain morning during the week to shoot, and an old gentleman who used to work for Cooper Arms in MT, would be there, too. I was shooting my M94 Marlin in .41 R.M. one morning and he took interest. I showed him the rifle, he thought it was cool, and asked me if I planned on being there the following week, and if I was, he had something for me. He also said he had a .41 R.M. revolver (I think it was a Smith M57) and liked the caliber pretty well. So, we had a pretty lively discussion on the merits of the .41 R.M. that morning, too.

Anway, I was there the next week, met with the gent, and he gave me a 20-round factory box of Barnes, 180 grn. H.P.s in .41 Rem Mag. Two rounds were gone from the box, and he said he just didn't like them and said I could have them. I asked him if he needed anything for them and he said no, but he was getting a bit low on .22 shells. The next week I was out there again, and so was he, but when I was done shooting on the rifle range, he was hunting brass on the pistol range and away from his pick-up. I stopped and stuck two boxes of 50 CCI standards on his dash and drove off. He never looked my way when I stopped, but he knew I was shooting out there, too. I know he knew I set the .22 shells in his truck, but I've never seen the old gent out there since then and feel kind of bad about that. Oh, yeah, the Barnes factory ammo the great old guy gave me used Starline brass for their cartridge cases.

And no doubt there's quite a bit of ammo available these days, because I'm picking up a LOT of brass recently that wasn't there just a couple of months ago at our local range.
 
I believe a new law just recently went into affect in Texas regarding the selling of scrap metal. Too many people were losing their catalytic converters so they really clamped down. Bad guys were doing it in broad daylight in store parking lots. That’s why all the ID stuff is now required, but I’d guess it’s still going on.
 
After 30-35 years of picking up every brass case that wasn't nailed down ... I'll have to admit to being a brass scrounger & packrat ... It was a bad day at the shooting range when I didn't come home with less brass than I went with ... I finally realized I had enough brass to last me a lifetime ... I have buckets of handgun and rifle brass ... I'm 72 now and I just don't need any more ...plus ... all that stooping over , bending and crawling around was more wear & tear on my old work damaged back could take ... I had to stop scrounging what's worse is I've even bought some brand new brass ... after 50 years of reloading fired range pick ups ... I treated myself to 100 Starline 357 Magnum cases all brand spanking new !
Since I'm not looking at the floor very hard any more ... it seems more shooters are picking up their empties ...they or their friends might reload .
50 years ago ... very few people cast bullets and reloaded ammo .
Gary
 
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