What is so Rare as a Day at the Range

[Bent Ramrod]

Where I don't find anywhere from three to a shirt pocketful of unfired .22LR rounds? Some, of course, are bent or the bullet damaged so feeding might be too difficult to bother with, and some have a firing pin indent and didn't go off, but a surprising number are just lying there, like somebody dumped them out of the box and left them. Or tossed them around at random.

I guess I'm showing my age and the poverty and victimhood of my childhood, but when .22LR used to cost an outrageous fifty cents a box (limit two boxes on special sale at K-mart) I and my youthful shooting companions were at pains to make sure that each and every one of those cartridges fulfilled the function envisioned for it by the factory, the gun manufacturer and ourselves; i.e., ka-pow, ka-blast. If one didn't fire, we rotated the rim and snapped again and again until it did. And, by the way, the ammo in those days didn't seem to require as much of that as some of it does now.

We were warned, of course, that a dropped round would carry dirt up the barrel, scratching it and ruining its fine accuracy, but my Glenfield .22 autoloader with the Micro-Groove rifling seemed to lose not the giltiest edge of its minute-of-tin-can accuracy as long as I conscientiously and thoroughly wiped the bullets off on my carefully laundered blue jeans. Nobody had enough ammunition to shoot at paper targets anyway back then, except at Boy Scout camp and other such places, so "fine accuracy" was kind of a null concept. If I didn't hit what I shot at, I was the one that missed, not the barrel.

I now have a Winchester Model 06 with a somewhat scruffy bore that I can recycle all these found cartridges through. Very few of them utterly refuse to go off, and most manage to salivate whatever I'm shooting at. I'm wondering if I should ask the state of California to pay me a subsidy for removal of all this pressure-generating, reactive, explosive hazardous waste I keep finding on the very surface of our precious environmental heritage.

Does anyone else notice this profligacy in the matter of lost and found ammunition? It's all over the desert out here where people shoot as well as the formal ranges. I can't imagine anyone of my generation being so wasteful. Maybe it's these kids today (*tsk*tsk*).

[redneckdan]

I pic up the left overs every night after range hours, I usually end up with a pocket ful, this is my plinking ammo supply.

[Maven]

We must be lucky because I find very few such rounds at our range, even after a .22 match. However, the [always] anonymous "range slobs" often leave their brass/steel empties on the ground for someone else to clean up. What also amazes me is the amount of once-fired perfectly good brass left behind in our recycling bucket probably because of the lack of time and maybe desire, to reload.

[bobthenailer]

i also see alot of unfired 22 ammo at the range almost every time i go, every so often i find live centerfire ammo, not counting all the discarded centerfire brass , i cant help my self i take it all home with me clean it seperate it by caliber & brand and store it in a cabinet for possible future use or to give to a buddy. i was given or found much more brass than i ever bought , i recently took a 5 gallon bucket of damaged brass & spent primers to a junk yard and received 80 cents a pound or $78.00 for the lot. one time i found a box that said help your self ,inside was 500 brand new starline 38 special brass and about 150 once fired 357 brass thay all voted to come home with me to live in my cabinet. bob

[Bent Ramrod]

I can see leaving the odd misfired CF auto pistol cartridge, as a lot of people do their PPC practicing and don't have time to save everything or find it later. I'll find one or two 9mm or .40 auto rounds occasionally, but the thrown-away .22's are a constant factor.

Ammunition must be a good deal less costly, relatively speaking, now than it was back in the good old days. Like some of you mentioned, there are tons of empties on the ground out here, or, if the person was mannerly, in the range buckets, typically .38-.357, 9mm, 40S&W, .308 and, more and more, .357Sig. .45 Auto is sometimes around, but much less often. Nobody seems to want to reload the more common calibers any more; maybe it just isn't worth their time to them. The .44 Mag and .45 Colt people leave few enough shells so I would gather they mostly reload or have somebody do it for them. There are also amazing quantities of shotshells. There are areas out in the desert almost paved with cheap low-base plastic 12ga shells, and a few loaded ones lurk among them. I have a 16, so I can't use them, and they would be questionable in any case for reloading after a couple days of our sunshine.

I was asked by our local recycle center if I had any old brass when I came in with my regular load of shot-up aluminum cans and PET bottles. I gathered that cartridge brass has become a hot commodity lately. Maybe I'll take my discarded shells over and trade them for the equivalent in pure lead next weekend.

Thanks for the responses.

[Frank46]

Some of the ranges I frequent I usually find a few loaded 22 rounds. One day while routing through the trash can (yeah I know its not dumpster diving but you'd be suprised what folks throw away) I found almost three boxes of 22 remington ammo. I too have a marlin model 60 so after weeding out the scratched and dented cases (and there were a bunch) proceeded to light them off.
Lately though all I've been finding are the dented ones with misshapen bullet noses. Guess some one tried shooting them but their rifle wouldn't feed them. I like the little marlin but the innards sure get gunked up with powder grains, lube and lead. Takes me longer to clean the internals than the bbl. I once had some rather ancient 22rf ammo. Each shot was different. One would go pop, the next maybe bang. Shot off some old cci stingers and the noise was considerably louder than the other stuff. Fun gun to shoot. frank