I am getting in to shooting after 40 years of not firing a handgun. I wanted to know what everyone does with their brass after shooting at a range. The military had us collect our brass but not sure what to do personally. Thanks in advance guys.

You can take up reloading. You could sell your brass. You could take it to a scrap yard.

I usually save mine and give it to buddies who reload.

Leave them along with some broken arrows and rock with a Knight's Templar Cross carved in it for future archeologists to discover.

Trapper thanks for the laugh. I will look in to folks that reload. At the moment, I have no desire to learn the reloading trade but at some point I might. That seems a bit daunting to me even though I have very good mechanical skills and knowledge. So I am on one side of the fence so we will see. Thanks as always guys.

I reload so I try to get all my brass, if I didn't I would try to be like Rogue and give it to friends.

On my club's indoor ranges, everyone who doesn't collect their own brass deposits it into a brass bucket, and then those of us who do reload can just come and easily collect (although it's generally not sorted).

On our outdoor ranges, it's a lot harder. It's large gravel, so even gathering your own brass is time consuming and painful without kneepads.

Over the years here I have karme d thousands of rounds of assorted pistol brass and I have had thousands of rounds of rifle karmared to me.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I usually save mine and give it to buddies who reload.

Same here. I don't have the patience, skill, or interest in reloading.

Some of it I reload (.45ACP, .45LC, .38spl/.357Mag, rifle match ammo in .223 and 6.5CM), the rest (9mm, 5.56 and .308 blasting ammo) I throw in a 5 gallon bucket and either recycle it or give it to a friend whose teenager will recycle it for spending money.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Expert308,

Reloading isn’t difficult, just have to pay attention. Other than that, either sell it, give to friends who reload, Im sure they would appreciate that. We reload for most of what we shoot, so we keep it all.

The two outdoor ranges I shoot at will have their youth team pick up the brass and either reload it or sell it to someone who reloads.

This helps save them money on the cost to compete and make some money to help pay for travel to competition.

quote:

Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:

On our outdoor ranges, it's . . . large gravel, so even gathering your own brass is time consuming and painful without kneepads.

Yeah, the club where I shoot has recently re-floored the pistol areas with gravel, making it difficult to retrieve brass.

Martin-who-works-with-me, has started to use something like this (only with better tips at the grabbing end):

I don't remember what I got for it, being 20 years ago, but I collected a couple of five-gallon buckets of brass and sold it to a scrapyard at the "contaminated brass" (the contamination being the spent primers, the occasional nickel-plated case and other "impurities") price. Commercial reloaders at gun shows might be interested in it.

Um.... How can you afford to shoot if you don't reload? I can't imagine buying factory new ammo and shooting it up. That stuff costs big bucks. Even components get expensive. If you go to gun shows and buy in bulk, you can do pretty well. Says a guy with enough ammo to probably start the next civil war. Most of us only buy new ammo when a screaming deal presents itself.

I am with rburg
I do reload and as a not very mechanically inclined person can say it is very easy and safe to do, and could not afford to shoot as much as I do without reloading, especially rifle calibers, revolver cartridges and 45 auto. I can reload about 150 45’s for the cost of one box of factory, and in rifles the cost of a reload is less than 1/2 that of a factory load.
I use my brass until it becomes damaged such as splits or deep dents not “ironed out” by resizing, getting many loads out of a case.
Once they do split or dent, or are in a caliber I don’t use,I will give them to friends that do reload those calibers. Once I have a large bucket full of scrap brass, a trip to the junkyard will usually yield enough cash for a box of bullets package of primers or couple pounds of powder

So reloading it is. I will have to rely on the experts as always as i have no clue on this. Some things i am good at but no this at the moment. Yah even range ammo is .40 cents a round now if you can find it. I will start me research early next week and now that I am back to work after 3 months, I will have to get caught up first. Thanks guys so much for all of the help!