Recovering your brass at the range

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Blue68f100 said:
I built a brass catcher that works fine at the indoor range I shoot at. Catches close to 100%. It's made out of a 50 cal ammo box (MTM), tripod legs and mosquitoe netting. I just set it on the bench. I do have to drop the front left support leg to clear the target carrier. I do have a top to go on it for one gun that throws brass over the top. When I shoot outdoors I use a shopmate to hold for my bench.

brasscatcher2.jpg
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I really like this contraption. I think I'll try to make one for myself.

It's a little big for the indoor range I go to , but it should work just fine at the outdoor range (the lanes are wider).
 
currently i shoot in the front yard and spread out an old bed sheet most of the time when shooting my bottom-feeders and have been able to recover about 95% of my brass. back when i went to a public range it was more like 150% at least. i really love being able to step out my front door and shoot to my heart's content, but sure do miss the piles of free brass...
 
I get better than 95%, but i'm a bit obsessive about it.
I'm generally the only person on the range, grab the far right stall against the wall, and pick up after every 2nd or 3rd magazine.
I mark my cases with different colored sharpies to differentiate lots. So identifying my brass is easy.

Unfortunately the range is pretty well scrounged before i get there, and the extras that i pick up turn out to be military cases or some strange beardan primed stuff.
 
I shoot at an outdoor range and am usually the only one there. I pick up everything I can and leave with more than I shot by a few pounds in various calibers. I keep what I reload and trade off what I don't.
 
Shooting in my pasture, with my pond dam as a backstop, I lost about 5% of my brass. Even keeping it mowed very short. I bought some plastic pipe, tees, and elbows to make a 9' x 9' frame and covered it with netting. I sat this up beside where I was shooting and recovered 97%. Being a retired CPA, I calculated that I would only have to shoot 4000 boxes to recover my cost.:D
 
I frequently come home with more that I fired, particularly with .223, 9mm, and .40S&W. There are apparently a lot of shooters at my range that don't bother to reload in those calibres.
 
With the revolvers, all of it. The 1911, less than half. (Which has made me think long and hard about whether I want to start reloading for the 1911.)
 
Revolvers - 100%
Bolts Guns -100%
Lever Guns - 100%
Semiautos - close to 100% since I started putting down two 10'x12' tarps. I'm the only one ever there so I have plenty of room.

I almost always come home with a shopping bag full of mixed caliber pickups. And if it recently rained I come home with a shopping bag full of lead as well :)


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I use a plastic bin at the bench with my M1, next to the rifle. It all ends up there.
 
100%.

My H&K leaves all the brass stacked in one neat pile. The internal round counter tells me exactly how many I fired, and updates my inventory via WiFi.

This makes things so much easier on my wife, who insists on collecting and cleaning all my brass for me. :D
 
I usually recover from 70% to 90% of my cases. Shooting 180-grain FMJ's from my SIG SP2022 .40 being pushed with 7.5 grains of Longshot tends to send 'em flying!
 
Similar to others, I lose some of mine over the line, or to someone "helping" clean up with the squeegee; but sometimes I'll get lucky and ask the person cleaning their area next to me if they can push it my way rather than forward, and they do. My 9mm inventory keeps growing...
 
The only brass I shoot that I worry about is my .45acp. The other stuff is either 9mm or revolvers.

Typically I lose a few each outing but it seems that once or twice a year I get out to our pistol pits right after someone has left about 200 rounds of .45acp on the ground. And being a good club member I take the time to clean the area up..... :D

9mm I don't worry about. There's enough folks at matches that shoot factory ammo and leave the brass on the ground that at the end of the day after the stages are cleaned up the few of us that reload scrounge the bays clean and typically go home with about half again or more than what we shot. So my 9mm brass stock is growing a little faster than it's going away.
 
At the moment I only care about the .45ACP brass. While I do recover as much of the 9mm brass I shoot as I can, I'm still not convinced I want to reload the stuff.

The costs of reloading 9mm vs. buying reloads has very diminished returns. Brass not withstanding the cost to reload is somewhere in the $.12 range. I can buy the reloads for about $0.15 ( I paid $150 for a box of 1000 at the last gun show). Even factory new ammo, end up at about $.20

Considering the work that goes into this, and accounting for lost brass, I have yet to start loading for this caliber, even though I have the dies.

To me, .45LC, 30-30 Win., .45ACP make sense to reload, 9mm... not so much.
 
At the moment I only care about the .45ACP brass. While I do recover as much of the 9mm brass I shoot as I can, I'm still not convinced I want to reload the stuff.

The costs of reloading 9mm vs. buying reloads has very diminished returns. Brass not withstanding the cost to reload is somewhere in the $.12 range. I can buy the reloads for about $0.15 ( I paid $150 for a box of 1000 at the last gun show). Even factory new ammo, end up at about $.20

Considering the work that goes into this, and accounting for lost brass, I have yet to start loading for this caliber, even though I have the dies.

To me, .45LC, 30-30 Win., .45ACP make sense to reload, 9mm... not so much.
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To me, it's not so much the cost of reloading vs. new or store-bought reloads for shooting purposes, for me it's more about building up a stockpile for future uses and unknown events for the cheapest price. I don't necessarily shoot a lot of 9mm, but that doesn't stop me from socking away thousands upon tousands of them. Same with many other calibers. A lot of my reloads are for shooting, but a lot of them are for peace of mind. Who knows what might happen if the wrong herd of idiots in Washington got ahold of the wrong kind of power?

Just because I've already got more brass in 9mm, .40S&W, .45acp, .38 Special, .223, etc. than I'll ever be able to shoot up, let alone get loaded up even one time, doesn't stop me from hauling home even more every chance I get. You can always sell or trade it too, ya know.
 
I pickup any and all brass that I find. If I can get it clean, I reload it, regardless of whether I own a weapon in that caliber or not. I truly enjoy crafting my own ammo. There are so many extra steps you can take with handloading, that it never truly gets boring. I'll have those calibers eventually, so it's no big deal to me to stock up on ammo for them. The cost per round, although much cheaper (for me) than buying new ammo, is really a non issue, since I really can't put a price on my enjoyment of the hobby.:D
 
The club I shoot at is open 24/7. I go in the wee hours of the morning, have the place all to myself and pick up all of my brass., I check the collection cans and sometime scor big. Free brass. What I can't use I save for trading material.
 
When shooting semi-auto rifles or pistols I just put out the 20'x20' tarp that I keep in my trunk. With the single shots, bolts, lever guns, pumps, and revolvers the brass is pretty easy not to lose.
 
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