Recovering fired rifle bullets

A big huge snowbank. go back in the spring with a metal detector

I have heard of oiled sawdust being used.

But it would take a heck of a lot of it.

Then too, it would probably catch on fire from spontaneous combustion and burn your house down.

rc

I have seen on the net of folks making a tray that holds a bunch of zip lock bags with water in them and shooting into it. IIRC it worked for them buy I have no idea what kept the bullet from wondering off and out the side of the box/tray. I believe the tray held 15/20 bags.

Go to the college art class near you and ask if you can buy their waste clay. You can get quite a bit of it for pretty cheap. Maybe even free. Granted, it will take quite a bit to stop a rifle bullet but at 100 yards it won't be too crazy.

I staple my targets to big blocks of cottonwood.
After they've been rotated a few times and the bullets are beginning to make it through the block I haul that one over to the wood splitter and break it up.
But, I'm not trying to keep the bullets intact, just to save the lead.
I get probably 95% back that way and it's easier for me than digging them out of the dirt.

Search for bullet trap ideas on cast boolits. Several ideas on what to do and what NOT to do.

Ive head of potting soil and sand. Probably best way to do it would have a roof over your backstop so the sand doesnt become concrete, and potting soild is easy sift through a screen as well as sand.

One large box. Fill this box with rubber tire mulch. I, use this method to recover my hand gun bullets. The last time I, was at the range I, fired both my .223, and .308 into it just out of curiosity. This was at 25 yards with no exit.

I, did not have time to separate the bullets from the mulch. So I, can't say what the condition of the bullets are in.

At 100 yards you should be able to stop a good number of the common rounds as long as you fluff it after a few rounds to prevent tunneling.

i have been able to recover bullets using gallon milk jugs filled with water. for a .308 we set up a 3 x 8 configuration of jugs on a flat surface we use a piece of plywood. 3 wide and 8 deep. make sure you are level with jugs. If it wasnt obvious aim for the middle jug.

rubber tire mulch

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That stuff might work pretty good as a long lasting bullet trapping material.
Seems like I saw bags of it for sale at a local garden supply.
Don't remember what it cost though.

What KIND of rifle bullets?

You won't be recovering any high-velocity bullets intact via any affordable means at that distance.

Even if you could fire into water at that distance, most high-velocity bullets are going to be severely deformed, if not outright fragment.

Are you trying to look for skidding etc on cast bullets?

Equipment I saw portrayed on an episode of CSI was a heavy-walled steel box filled with small hard rubber balls. Great for repeat usage, easy to sift, probably very pricy for the box. They were firing at powder-burn ranges.

(A commercial product no doubt).

For cheap how about really thick stacks of newspaper.
The tricky part is to punch thru layers of paper, not the edges. That means you need to stand them on their edges. Multiple tried bundles?

Probably need at least 2 feet for serious rifle cartridges.

How about old telephone books? They're usually around in large numbers when the new directories come out.

Merry Christmas- oldandslow

IMHO old phonebooks would be a great option, if you could get enough of them. Heck, after you're done shooting them they could be recycled in any case.Just "riffle" to get the projectiles out of them...

blarby said:

Thats not gonna work. We dont get enough snow here.

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That's too bad since that would be the best way. It doesn't take too much snow either. The bullets, after the snow melts, are laying on the ground all shiny and polished. If you're shooting a pretty tough bullet, i.e., a solid or an FMJ, sand or mud would work.

Tire mulch and phone books, or newspapers sound really good. But for the country bumpkins like myself our phone books are as think as a childrens coloring book. So might need to go dumpster diving. Lol

old phone books would be a great option,

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Old dry phone books are as tough on a bullet as the shoulder joint on a bull moose.
It will bust up anything short of a Solid used on elephant.

Wet phone books are as tough on bullets as the hind quarter of a elk.

If a bullet is going to expand or blow up, it will do it on wet newsprint, phone books, etc.

Same with water in zip-lock bags.

Of all the suggestions so far, the only one that sounds even halfway feasible to stop a rifle bullet without damaging it, other then the big snow drift, is the recycled rubber tire mulch.

But I have never tried that myself.

rc

I recovered a .50 cal blackpowder bullet from a mud bank one time. It was a solid copper design and it expanded exactly like the ones they use for marketing purposes on the website. I was impressed.

We have a large dirt pile behind our rifle and pistol ranges and routinely find bullets laying around (especially pistol). Rifle bullets you'll have to dig for...a metal detector and a shovel will be your assistants. We shoot pistols at reactive ground targets and we find those bullets just laying on top of the dirt. Cast bullets and jacketed alike from everything from .380 to .44 mag are dang near unharmed when we pick them up...although they have a weird texture...almost like they were so hot when they hit the dirt that the dirt started to melt to the bullet (with cast bullets especially).