"Sight in day" berm--what kind of lead are shotgun slugs?

[John in WI]

I got to talking with the owner of the club/range I just joined. I asked him "do you allow people to mine the berms?" and he said "As long as I don't know about it, it's fine!"

He suggested trying the range that is setup for use the week before shotgun season.

I think that would be great---expanded slugs are huge and should be easy to pick.

Normally I don't do anything to separate the bullets. Just melt it down together, and get a fairly soft mix. But since I know that 100% of the lead in this berm is from shogun slugs, I'm thinking I should melt it separately.

Slugs should be of very soft lead, wouldn't you think? I remember my old favorite Remington "Sluggers" would literally look like a shot glass if you fired them into jugs of water, and I'm thinking it must have been very soft to deform like that.

[evan price]

In my experience shotgun slugs are soft lead with added antimony, roughly 5%, just like magnum shot. No tin. Great for hardening an alloy.
I mine slugs especially in the fall around deer gun season. We don't allow rifle in Ohio. There's always slugs laying on the backstop and they are 1oz chunks, easy to see and pick up.

[John in WI]

about half of WI is also shotgun country, and this range has been open for about 30 years so there's probably (literally) tons of slugs burried in the berm. I'm hoping I can cash in on it and start building up my supplies. WW is drying up around here, and Ebay isn't going to cut it much longer.

[1Shirt]

The slugs I have tried with my Cabin Tree have tested out not much harder than pure lead. Maybe 1-2 BH harder, but no more than that.
1Shirt!

[John in WI]

I guess I'll just have to try and retrieve some and see what it looks like. Hopefully this rain will wash some loose by next weekend to make my life easy.