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Shooting is major forest recreation activity

8K views 93 replies 27 participants last post by  James in Idaho 
#1 ·

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#2 ·
We have the Wolf Creek range out here on highway 26, it is a very busy place. We need more areas. I go on rainy days, that seems to help some.
 
#4 ·
On one of my trips up there, a couple of LEO's were training a couple of gals and they mentioned there are some more shooting lanes on up highway 26 on the Salmonberry road I believe. Don't know if they are as well developed.

Places to shoot around here have gotten so bad that I have thought about buying a piece of ground just for the purpose.

We have a great place for a really nice shooting complex on the Scappoose road, but the county has the darn trail along side of it and they don't want a shooting range. Could have had a pistol, rifle out to 300 yards and trap areas. No neighbors with in 3/4 mile in any direction.
 
#6 ·
But we cannot ever pick up the lead.

Hello 444,

As I write this,,,I confess to being far more guilty than most.

We can pick up the brass, the targets, even the beer cans,soda cans, and broken glass but we can not pick up the lead shooters leave behind. Every year shooters in America spread between 25,000 tons and 60,000 tons of lead over our land. Any place designated for shooting will become a toxic waste sight. There is no way around this fact. National Forest and BLM resource managers struggle with this undeniable reality.

The cost to wildlife is having somewhere between 10,000,000 and 20,000,000 birds and animals from 130 different species die every year from lead left behind by shooter and fishermen.

. And while the problem is obviously worse at dedicated shooting areas, lead left behind by shooters is omnipresent across the land we hunt and shoot on.

For over a century in our country, beginning with the advent of higher and higher velocity cartridges,,30-06 to .270,,,then varmint cartridges, we shooters and hunters have seasoned our star spangled land with lead. The US Geological Survey finds lead in the soil nearly everywhere in our wild lands left behind by a century of shooting.

We shooters and hunters are hardly the conservationists we claim to be. And I have been far more guilty than most.
 
#7 ·
DB: Thank you for bringing that up. Good point. I am 'slowly' phasing out my lead - but I suspect that I might have a decade or more of stock. The problem when you have a few odd ball gauges and calibers you tend to stock up. Plinkin' loads for my revolvers are all lead...and I don't know if I could find a non-tox load for most of them.

What suggestions do you have to mitigate the lead issue? Selling off or giving what I have away would only redistribute the lead.
 
#9 ·
No doubt we are spreading lead around, but let's not paint the picture the the landscape is pristine. Map of lead deposits across the US.
 
#14 ·
The lead used in bullets has chemical properties that make it so easy to identify and separte from natural lead and lead in paint. It is the lead from bullets that is being identified consitently in wildlife especially so during and after hunting season when the lead posioning in wildlife spikes.
 
#10 ·
I seldom ever go to a regular firing range. I ave place's I know f where I can choose anywhere from a 100yd range to farther than I can see! Never much of any residence's around to bother anyone. Thing I've found though is places where people shoot, especially close to cities, people that shoot there are sobs. Garbage very where and ton's of fired ammo case's. Easy to tell cheap ammo, lots of fired stuff laying around. Pet peeve of mine is those that set up glass bottles and shoot them! Just so ya know, I pull up and see people shooting at glass, I get the license plate number and call the state police and report it with the license number. There are a lot of place's on public land where you can set up to shoot and not be in anybody's face.
 
#11 ·
As a bullet caster, I try to harvest scrap range lead where I can, but it is a drop in the bucket, of course. That said, I'll keep casting and shooting lead bullets as long as I am able. I don't mind hunting with monometals, though.
I work part-time at our county shooting range, and encourage folks to shoot with us instead of on public lands whenever I get the chance.
 
#17 ·
Had really good back stops in Montana and Colorado and took a sive and bucket with me every time. I too have shot a lot of cast bullet's. Amazing how many bullet's I could pull out of good dirt backstop's. Here in Oregon where I shoot just to much rock on the back stop's.
 
#12 ·
About 20 years ago I found myself downrange of some yahoos shooting on public land. I spent over an hour crouched down behind the river bank while bullets popped the leaves over my head. They parked right next to my truck and shot towards the trail leading to the river. I lost all my fishing gear but came away alive.

It changed my opinion on shooting on public land instantly and permanently.


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#20 · (Edited)
I really wish Oregon or the Feds would start a deposit program on shotgun shells similar to the Bottle Bill. Shot gunners litter the forest with plastic garbage. They are a black eye to the shooting community. A 5 or 10 cent refundable deposit on each shell would go along way to eliminating this problem. The lead bullet problem on the other hand is a complete hoax perpetrated by the usual gang of neerdowells.
 
#23 ·
I can shoot the emptys I have now for many years. The hulls people litter with now have a value. Yet they litter with this cash. Nickles all over the marsh.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Only a small minority of shooters reload and only the smallest minority of reloaders reload shotgun hulls. The forests and rock quarries are filled with plastic shotgun hulls yet brass with the exception of rimfire gets picked up for the most part. This is because the amount of people reusing hulls are negligible.The same crowd shooting boxes of birdshot are the same guys shooting up old computer monitors and TV sets.

Oregon pre-bottle bill was littered with cans and bottles in natural areas. With inflation this started to become an issue again until the deposit was raised to a dime. There is no hole in my argument as we already have successful long term programs as proof. If you are saying shotgunners will start reloading hulls to avoid the deposit well good whatever makes them clean up their mess is a win. However people really haven't started brewing and bottling their own beer to avoid the bottle deposit so I see that as a pretty weak argument.
 
#32 · (Edited)
Just don't be the slob and if you encounter slob shooting areas police them as much as you can afford, every time you go out bring a big garbage bag. Teach your children its not all about them. We all share these spaces and we may need to clean after these degenerate mommas boys who won't . When I drive around hunting I will police a area or pick up cans on my way. I even pack out beer cans in my pack. Its good karma. Heck ya shooting is a major forest recreation :meme: Their are many excellent safe impact areas in the forest that could be located and used as such. I have tons of places with in a 50 mile radius of Portland on my gps.
 
#33 ·
I believe those are mineral deposits and not waste sites or contamination sites. It's not hard to spot the Butte copper pit. The lead in those deposits is usually a mixed oxide or sulfide of copper, lead and zinc. Buried and not available or in a form to be ingested by anything on the surface.


I don't think we'll ever run out.
 
#36 ·
Some states do not share data well on the map. The map is showing known mineral explored sites. Not all are lead. But a lot of them have lead as part of the mineral at the site. A lot have Mercury. A lot have Uranium.
 
#38 · (Edited)
Here is the surface level soil lead content from around the nation.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2017/5118/sir20175118_element.php?el=82
Just an uneducated guess, looks like some combination industrial pollution, left over contamination from leaded gasoline and in more populated areas paint, throw in some natural occurring high lead areas. Not sure how Florida got of without much. They kind of act like a lead induced crazed people down there, must be another reason for that.

Any this is beside the point. I think we that hunt and fish kind of start to disregard the downside of lead. We historically have used it for so many things. Thia familiarity with it I think makes us forget that it is a toxic heavy metal. No level in your system, no mater how small, has been shown to be completely safe. Use it carefully, with awareness that the more we leave around the environment the more we and wildlife will come in contact with it, and only when there isn't an acceptable less poisonous option. Same as one should do with any poisonous substance.
 
#42 ·
Which animals eat lead on land?

Sure, we know waterfowl can scoop upon some while sifting the bottom. Sure, some birds inadvertently pick up small pieces in searching for gravel. Sure, secondary contamination is possible if you shoot one animal and a different one feeds on it.

Like everyone else, I’d be happy for lead to disappear tomorrow, but I can’t say I’m a believer that target shooting is a significant impact. There wouldn’t be any animals alive now if it was significant. It’s not like people just started shooting lead. Reality is we shoot less solid lead bullets than ever and my guess is the number of shooters is decreasing not increasing.

So, decrease your lead use because it makes reasonable sense not because it’s going to save the planet. As noted, lead is naturally occurring.
 
#45 ·
10/10 shooting spots that I have seen in NF in western oregon coast range have of some kind of garbage dumped or dumped and shot at: tv microwave wash machines busted glass bottles occasional sofa, tires or bags of household garbage. Sad. White trash shooting ranges!
 
#61 ·
dont punish the good guys punish the bad ones. fine litter bugs a big fine and enforce it and it will stop.


So who is going to pay to have a super undercover officer hiding in the bushes making sure the junk leaver is the culprit and not the good guy who shows up days later?


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No need for cops in the bushes. Do we need cops in the bushes to make sure bottles and cans get picked up? I don't shoot a lot of shotgun and I dont engage on criminal behavior by littering but I would be more than happy to pay a 50 cent or $1 deposit per non metallic/plastic case hull or cartridge. That would solve the problem overnight with the birdshot crowd
 
#62 ·
...I would be more than happy to pay a 50 cent or $1 deposit per non metallic/plastic case hull or cartridge. That would solve the problem overnight with the birdshot crowd
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if we just had a $.50 deposit on Keystone Light cans alone, most of the litter I see in the NF would be gone! I find those cans out in the middle of nowhere ALL THE TIME.
 
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