Hard Lead Bonanza

[grullaguy]

I was looking at old photos a few weeks back and there was a photo of I and some friends shooting at a range that now, has been shut down for at least 20 years. I got to wondering if the lead was still in the hillside back there.

This morning I and the dog jumped in the truck and headed out there. In this climate, a lot of trees can grow up in 20 years, but eventually I found the hillside. It had been untouched since the range closed. Years of rains had washed the bullets out and deposited them in piles in gullies and depressions. Probably 90% of them are hard cast and in good enough condition that you could almost reload them as they are. Some even still have lube in the grease grooves. It is an isolated, lonely spot and just the sort of place that I can spend more than a few days this coming summer doing a little harvesting.

Just thought I would share a happy story for a change.

[gbrown]

Congratulations!! Good for you. In many of my posts I have said that lead is out there, we just need to be creative, inventive and resourceful. Your story is a good one and I am glad you were creative, inventive and resourceful.

[AndyC]

Oh, what a nice find - good work in tracking it down :)

[Stick_man]

Congrats! Recycling at it's best! Quality time in the outdoors, cleaning up all those "nasty chunks of super-toxic substances", and being able to replenish your supplies of lead. Stories like that should make the tree-huggers happy. Just don't tell them about it until you are done removing ALL the lead that you can up there.

[LUBEDUDE]

Sweeeet

[caseyboy]

Care to share this spot with another Vancouver Islandite???

[454PB]

Nice!

And to think we see questions all the time about the storage life of lubed boolits.

[SlowSmokeN]

That is a great find. I tried the same at a range that was closed for years and found nothing. I think I am going to go back and look at the bottom of the hill.

[grullaguy]

Care to share this spot with another Vancouver Islandite???

I am going to keep a lid on this one until I can pick it over.

If you are coming up this way, I suppose I could plan a little outing. Or I can ship you a box at a very favorable cost.:bigsmyl2:

Send me a PM if interested.

[caseyboy]

Hi grullaguy,

Thanks for the offer, but I was only joshing. I get more lead from our range than I know what to do with. Our club has over 2000 members, and I am probably the only one picking lead.

Mike

[leadbutt]

Not all ghosts of the past are bad. Good job.

L. Bottoms

[merlin101]

Great find!! And thanks for reminding me of that old range, I will keep you all updated!

[grullaguy]

Hi grullaguy,

Thanks for the offer, but I was only joshing. I get more lead from our range than I know what to do with. Our club has over 2000 members, and I am probably the only one picking lead.

Mike

Ha, Ha.

I am in the same situation. Everyone looks at me weird when I pick up lead behind the targets. I like to go there before the range opens in the morning and load up. The pistol range is pretty saturated, but it is 90% jacketed.

Now with the two sources, I have a good supply of both hard and soft lead.

[grullaguy]

Great find!! And thanks for reminding me of that old range, I will keep you all updated!

Please do.

Unless the range was professionally cleaned, there should still be lead there. Looking for my hillside, I checked a few others on the way in, and found a second hillside that had been shot into a fair bit.

Take a small gardening trowel or shovel so you do a couple of test holes.