Help My Boolits Are Missing

[deerslayer]

Ok guys I am still a newbie so here is my question. Where i shoot i am on flat ground shooting anywhere from 7 to 50 yards into a hillside that is probably at a thirty degree angle. We have shot probably 5 or 10 thousand rounds in this spot. The other day I was bored and assumed there must be a bucket of lead in that hill. Well I dug and dug and only found a handful of bullets. I dug 10-12" deep am I wrong are handgun bullets penetrating deeper than that or are they bouncing off. The ones i did find were fully intact which made me assume the dirt was slowing them down enough and they were not disentegrating on impact. So if anyone has experience with missing boolits clue me in, before I do unofficial experimenting. Thanks Nathan

[Hickory]

There is a good chance that the "lead suckers" have been in your area.
Lead suckers are creatures the have an addiction to lead, and rely on
it for their own pleasure and well being.
These poor creatures suck up the lead left by shooters, they have no other source
to supply their addiction. They do not know about tire stores, junk yards or recycling places.
Have mercy on them if you catch them at your back stop sucking out the lead, and don't shoot them. It might be someone you know.


You might be one of them!

[Wayne Smith]

What's the composition of your hillside? Loam, sand, rocks, aggregate, etc? This will tell me a lot about the likelihood of ricochet or depth of penetration. Also how hard is it packed?

[Hickory]

Come on Wayne, don't inject too much logic here.
Mentally, I think I had him on the ropes there for a while.

[awaveritt]

They're probably just deeper than you think. One day, I dug around trying to find a 115 gr. 9mm hollow point and never did get deep enough. Softly packed ground, and moisture also contributes to more penetration.

Of course, Hickory may be right.

[Gunfixer]

FWIW
I shot into the dirt in a burn pile with a 30 carbine and a 45acp at 5 feet. The bullets were found about 20 inches down. ( deeper than the lead suckers could crawl)

[rob45]

Depending upon exposure to elements and composition of your backstop, the bullets will "sink" at varying rates.

Rather than merely digging "further back" into the backstop, have you also checked at a lower point?

Here's an example: One of the ranges I frequent has the target backers 3-4 feet above ground level, yet better than 75% of the bullets recovered will be much closer to the ground. It's even more evident after winter and spring storms.

Otherwise, I really appreciate Hickory's comment!

[jimb16]

I've discovered the lead suckers for some unknown reason will find certain rounds unpalletable and will spit them out leaving them on the surface. I've been wondering....are these safe to remelt or is there something toxic about them?

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Up here in Ideeeeeeeho, we have the rare and endangered subterainan lead suckers.

They are increasingly rare, as in spite of the "endangered" listing we do and will continue to kill every one we find.

By the way, the young of the year are quite good eating, being especially good if cooked on a cedar plank in the barby.

Older ones are almost impossible to get tender unless pressure cooked after a couple days of soaking in a heavy solution of meat tenderizer.

Oh, just to explain the reasoning to our vendetta against these pests, we are leary of allowing too much lead to get too deep, fearing that if the Feds. get wind of it they'll turn our shooting range into one of those major invironmental cleanup sites and close us down.

And this not to mention the possiblity of them digg'in into the remains of long gone investagators who were nosing around our methenol production.
plants.

Yep, some of our ol'folk were way ahead of Al Gord on this enviromental clean up thing.

Keep em coming!

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[deerslayer]

What's the composition of your hillside? Loam, sand, rocks, aggregate, etc? This will tell me a lot about the likelihood of ricochet or depth of penetration. Also how hard is it packed?

The hill is loamy clay with some rocks and about 4 inches of good topsoil. Also someone mentioned boolits sinking????

[stubshaft]

Look for them at the bottorm of the hill, not where you had shot them. I usually harvest my lead from the berm at the range after a good rain. It helps was away all of the loose soil.

[Mk42gunner]

Rocks will work to the surface of a field. Boolits being lighter than your average boulder may be levitating up into the jetstream then being blown away....

Or they could be deeper than you dug.


Robert

Is it Spring yet?

[Greenhorn44]

They could be boucing off each other, pushing them deeper.

[lead-1]

They could be boucing off each other, pushing them deeper.

That would be some serious one hole groups.

[vulture47]

Sometimes it can be very difficult to tell the lead slug from small rocks and particles of dirt, ask me how I know this, yup spent half an hour digging around looking for four or five slugs to see how the impact with the hill side had affected them, when I finally found them little buggers I realized I had handled them several times already, the hard clay was imbeded right into the lead and they were deformed in such a way they were the general shape of small stones. Shooting into loose sand the recovered slugs were hardly damaged at all. Good luck on your lead suckers hunting you guys that are hunting them, but you might want to rethink talking about that on here. Don't know about where you live but here in Utah if the DWR out people are shooting them they will call it a game animal and make you buy a licesne. No it doesn't matter if it's a real bad pest, they will make it a game animal, greedy people anyway.

[44man]

I have the same problem, thanks for explaining it. I am going hunting for lead suckers!

[bigdog454]

Lead suckers! Luv ya guys.