Young reloaders

mooner

New member
I have a question for you. I took the daughter shooting yesterday afternoon and and at the range there was some young men shooting when they were done they just left they picked up the trash but left thousands of empties on the ground when I mean thousands I mean literly thousands daughter I picked up 500 38sp 3000 45acp and 9000 9mm cases and I haven't counted the 556 and 7.62x39 stuff yet. Is it me or aren't young people doing this anymore?
 
There are a lot that do not reload. In the case of 9mm it is not worth reloading. I can buy them for not much more than I can load them for.
 
We have a guy that comes to our club. He shoots 6.5CM, 3ooBO, 300 Hammer, 243 and 308. He's retirement age and doesn't reload. He sweeps up his brass and throws it in the trash can. I keep bags in my truck now and dumpster dive the second he's out of sight. I got $90 for his brass the last time I sold it. Took him a couple of trips before I gathered that much though. I got no shame, I'll jump in a dumpster in a heartbeat.
 
Granted some brass isn't worth a lot but it does have value. High volume pistol shooters will buy it or maybe trade something for it. All you have in it is picking it up.
 
People leave lots of brass at a local range, and there are several people that come to pick it up to either scrap, trade, or use for reloading.
It takes time to reload, to some it's easier to just buy the ammo and blast away!
 
There are a few of us young reloaders left. I am 28 and started reloading when I was 12 and could big game hunt. I prefer the accuracy and bullet selection you get with reloading over factory ammo. I am always amazed at how many people don't at least pick up their brass to recycle it. I mean you're literally leaving money on the ground that all it takes to get is the 5 minutes to sweep it up and the trip to the recycler. I'm with pyscodog and will dumpster dive is the pickings are good.
 
Oh I'm not bashful I cleaned all that brass right up. One of my dad's friends got me in to this hobby or habit. We were out shooting wood chucks and he was running low and he grabbed in the glove box of his truck where he had a Lee loader kit he sat there and rolled out 20 rounds after watching that I was hooked been reloading ever since. And when I was younger ammo was not cheap and when it was wood chuck time I shot a lot so reloading was the answer to that. And I know some calibers are cheaper than other but dang that's a lot of possible ammo to my mindset just wasted on the ground.
 
Looks like the young'ns got the money but not the time. If you've got the time to reload you might not have the money to buy factory ammo. Most of my guns have never fired a factory round that wasn't given to me. I reload everything.
 
The only factory ammunition I've purchased in the last 30+ years is was for my 6.5 Creedmoore and that was because I wanted to shoot it and didn't want to wait for brass to come in the mail.
 
For me, I buy 9mm's to shoot, I can buy them for less than reloading, I don't even have a set of dies for it.

People tossing brass is also a plus for me, I shoot 20 practical and 6x45 but don't own a 223, I shoot a 22-204, 6mm-204 and a 25-204 but don't own a 204 Ruger. Same with the 35 Whelen, I no longer have a 30-06.
 
First, I am not above cleaning up range brass, and either loading it, or scrapping it. If it cleans up, passes my inspection, and is a cartridge I load, it gets loaded. Range brass, for me is for plinking loads, or competition pistol loads, on lost brass ranges.

The only factory ammo I buy is rimfire, and SD pistol loads, to give lawyers one less issue to squawk about, in a potential trial, if I find myself in a self defense situation. I also buy some factory shotgun ammo, to freshen up my hull supply occasionally. But mostly I hand load for my firearms.

As for young people getting into hand loading, my sons keep threatening to hang out in my loading room, to do some learning how to load, for the day I stop pulling on loading press handles, but somehow they never find time for that. My youngest son, who is the most interested, lives in Texas, and my loading room is in Wisconsin...Kind of a long drive to hand load a few batches of ammo for his rifles and pistol. So my thoughts on young people getting into hand loading is more about time. The new digital world has many distractions for young people. Me, I don't do social media, and most often I have the phone on ignore. Actually I can't take the phone into my loading room. The stupid thing drives my Denver Instruments scale crazy with all the cell phone radiation.

Squeeze
 
I’m 34 and dad got me started reloading when I was about 8, helping him.

I’ve got enough brass to last me a life time already, I hope.

I pick up all brass I find. Netted about $70 the last few buckets I took to the scrape yard along with some pop cans.

The kids like to help pickem up. Amazing what you can get with a dust pan and broom off the concrete 22lr firing line.

I’ve even gone out early to the range on a Monday morning after a nice weekend or early in the morning after a holiday to get brass. The Monday morning after Easter I got almost a 5 gallon bucket full between all the firing lines.

If nothing else I get some cash the wife doesn’t know about!
 
The opportunity cost for me to reload semiauto pistol rounds instead of doing ANYTHING else is too great. I don’t compete in pistol games any more, so I found a couple cheap factory loads which shoot well enough for my needs, and buy them in bulk. I dedicate that time I don’t spend reloading autopistol rounds into studying investments, teaching my son how to read and do math, and exercising. All things which easily pay back the difference on the pistol rounds I shoot each year.

I do, however, pick up my brass and sell what’s worth selling, and scrap the rest. Including picking up other brass left by other shooters who are silly enough to lose value.
 
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I have a neighbor that wants to reload but emailed me ads on ammo prices. We went to the range shooting. There was a stump's root ball on the berm about 53 yards away, it was hard for either of us to miss it with my reloads, jacket'd 124g with AA#7 in a Springfield XDM-Competition.

Then he got out about 4 brands of factory, now the opposite was true, was hard for us to hit that small root ball.

Plinking is plinking, have it your way.
 
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