Increasingly it is difficult in many areas to find a place for recreational shooting. Urban sprawl is often the cause and the fields we hunted as kids are now subdivisions or shopping malls.

Increasingly recreational shooters and hunters are being denied access to private land, too, as well as some state trust lands. Its not hard to understand why if you visit areas popular with recreational shooters and look at the debris and litter left behind.

A great dove/quail area that has welcomed hunters in the past locked the gates this year. I asked the landowner why and he took me to a small watering hole. In walking the perimeter of the tank, about 100yds, we counted 2,200+ shotgun hulls. At the base of the berm, it was littered with 22 shells and, mainly, a few thousand 7.62X39 brass. In return for access, three of us promised to police the area in proximity to the tank and filled two pickup beds with 55 gallon garbage bags. Beer cans, broken glass, a shotup computer, and bags and bags of hulls and brass.

I am at a loss as to why there are so many slobs that believe the countryside is their own private garbage dump. I don't understand why bird hunters would leave their hulls or AK shooters would blast away at glass and frangible targets only to leave the mess behind. Its beyond me why 22 rimfire shooters would simply eject their brass on the ground. But, we all pay the penalty for these acts of stupidity, rudeness and ignorance.

More and more areas are being declared off limits to recreational shooters due to this misbehavior. I have no problem bringing the matter to the attention of other shooters and I am sometimes greeted with a blank stare, but, often with a nod and agreement to police the area. At least, it makes me feel better.

Is shooting litter a problem in your area, too?

It is a problem at every state owned range in Georgia. Your right, the slobs think that someone else's job is to go around behind them and pick up their trash. An obvious failure of their mothers for not beating the crap out of them for the same thing at home. The state provides trash drums but the only people that deposit anything in it are those that care or the state rangers.

They shoot up the target frames because they are too stupid or cheap to bring their own targets and a stapler. The other stupids manage to shoot holes in the roof of the few covered positions. Like you say, beer bottles are usually the target of choice and you know that if they tried to clean up the glass that they would fall over and pass out.

Another glaring example is the Range Rules Sign being shot up and unreadable.

It's only a matter of time until those ranges are closed.

Howdy. Ya we got the slobs here as well. The range where I shoot has a brass bin right behind the benches for putting your fired brass in when finished, very few clean up after themselves. I don't understand the mentality of those that won't. I always walk around picking up other people's brass before I leave.
Joe

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I always walk around picking up other people's brass before I leave.

A guy at the a gunshop told me that the best way to get new once fired brass was from these slobs

Told me there are 2 types of people at the range. The people that pick up after themselfs and take there brass with them after that reload and the people that leave the brass on the floor because they bought a couple of boxs of ammo to "shoot" and sight in there guns.

I'm starting to see why thats true now that I'm thinking about reloading.

In a few months it will be time to start hitting all the shooting ranges in Augest through October to find once fired brass from these recreational shooters

Dimitri

Me too Dimitri...I take it home and clean it and sort it and load it and shoot it again...We have a public area called Cherry Canyon where you can go shoot to your hearts content...Only problem is people bring their TV, washing machine, drier, stove and other junk that don't want and shoot holes in it and leave it behind...SLOBS...Note the last two letters in that word...I ask the ranger if we could use them for targets. He said NO with a smile...Then they wonder why they want to require a "recreation pass" for these places...We got the passes removed, but we have to volenteer to clean up other peoples trash...Almost worth it...Especially when I catch someone leaving their trash behind and take their license number and give it to the rangers...A week or two later I notice a couple of folks cleaning up and they were not volenteering....The ranger was armed...

Bushmaster,

Good work!

I myself see it like this, ether I dont own the land I'm shooting so I want to be respectful for its use be it private or public. And if it was my own land I wouldnt want it to look like a landfill anyways.

I dont understand these litters at all myself. Oh well. I'll help clean the range the moment I find one around here. They closed the one I wanted to go to this spring to shoot (At this point I'm betting slobs are at fault from what I've heard from reliable people that know the guy that ran the free public range). Me picking up a bunch of brass = free copper. Even if I dont reload for it if I get some brass it will be worth the time to pick it up to add to a collection of "unneeded brass"

Dimitri

What if there was a "per cartridge" deposit? Let's say you bought a box of rimfire ammo and included in the price was a 5 Cent redeemable deposit? Likewise for shotshells or centefire ammo.

Would that provide an incentive to clean up after a shooting session and gather the debris of others? I believe it is a partial answer.

Let's see...That would explain all the empty beer, soda, water and other debris that california has put a deposit on that hasn't worked except for the homeless that keep our streets clean, but can not afford to go 15 miles up in the foot hills and clean up the empties at the public range. And what would I and the other reloading scroungers do for once fired cases...No... This will not work either. A gun up their collective butts might do the trick...

Bushmaster wrote:

Let's see...That would explain all the empty beer, soda, water and other debris that california has put a deposit on that hasn't worked except for the homeless that keep our streets clean, but can not afford to go 15 miles up in the foot hills and clean up the empties at the public range. And what would I and the other reloading scroungers do for once fired cases...No... This will not work either. A gun up their collective butts might do the trick...

I have to agree with you Bushy, it wouldn't make a difference. The area I go target shooting in is the same way. Full of garbage like TV's furniture and just about anything. It is a free place to go and shoot and there's a bunch of idiots that think it's a garbage dump. I take my target stand with paper targets and bring everything back that I went there with. I also pick up a lot of brass there and like you, I clean it and sort it and keep the once fired and throw the rest in the garbage.

And they just don't understand why they close down public ranges...!@#$%^&* Idiots....

Yep...... Slobs are every where and in every walk of life......

It is sad. When I lived in S. Ca. I took the kids to the only place we could plink( a place called Azusa Cannon). When I was younger you could just pull off the road and shoot but the trash got so bad that they made us go to one area to shoot. The area was about a mile hike in, I guess they firured that it would be hardder to hall old TV's and such in that far.They were wrong. I have never seen so much crap in my life, plus you had to get up there at the crack of dawn, other wise you were shooting with all these guys that had hauled up large coolers of beer and what ever for a "fun day of shooting".
It sure is nice to go out on the back porch now and do my shooting. There is a lot to be said about living out in the sticks of Texas.

This is a topic that REALLY gets me going. I check with all the farmers/land owners I hunt every year.......and take my kids with me as much as possilbe. I was told by two of them that next year they will post the property...........because no one seems to care about all the trash (beer bottles, DD coffee cups, 2 litter coke containers, etc, etc) left behind.
One of them lost their family pet --black lab-- this last year and really will not let ANYONE in.
New Hampshire.....Live Free or Die.......until the slobs ruin it.

I had to respond to this post, Last year me and my Daughters went to the public shooting range in this area, when we arrived we smelled something very bad, we looked and some one had brought a box of kittens to the range and unloaded a shotgun at the box, killing all 7 kittens in the box and then left it there! Now, I dont like cats, but that is Stupid. and then to leave it there for my 15 & 13 year old Daughters to find. I was mad enough that we did not shoot, we went to the Sherriffs office and reported what we found. but they could do nothing because there was no one who seen anything. If I had seen it they would have had some other bodies to bury.
Yep, slob's and sadistic as&holes will ruin this sport for us all.

Hey kbis, Had you ever gone out to Lytle Creek here in So. Cal. It was another area where you could shoot for free, it was also loaded with TV casings, refridgerators, beer bottles and such along with the added fun of idiots with full autos stand with the ejection ports three feet from you. The police did not even patrol up there much, i do not know if they were afraid of getting shot at or just did not have the manpower. They knew about it because I used to shoot with some of them, they did not want it know while up there. They eventually closed it down, opened a fee area near there, and cleaned up the original area. I was up there scouting a couple of years back and the bushes and shrubs have grown in but the ground still shimmers from the glass content. Really sad, it could be one of the nicer areas to go local. There are idiots everywhere but sometimes I figure that Califonia has more than it's share.