If you are a litterer....STOP!!

Recently in Washington state they have enacted a law that the Dept of Natural Resources can close any public land any time they want for no reason at all. They have cleaned up a lot of the spots that people used to informally shoot and closed the areas to the public. The message is either clean up your mess or lose the privledge to shoot here. I really don't know why people have to bring their old TV's, washers, and refrigerators to the woods to shoot them up but it has to stop. FRJ

Sheepdog, "'Let no one say it, and say it to your shame, that all was beauty here before you came'. The words of 'Tubby' Mellor, the first headmaster of Tapton House, as he reminded pupils to have the highest regard for the beautiful house and parkland, situated on the outskirts of Chesterfield, Derbyshire."

http://www.oldtaptonians.co.uk/mothsreviews.html

Well, as a sportsman (as many of us are) I kind of feel it's our responsibility to help preserve our natural resources as well. And I'm no tree hugger either. In fact it's in our sportsmen's club's creed.

Nice thread. Also, please don't shoot road signs.

I really don't know why people have to bring their old TV's, washers, and refrigerators to the woods to shoot them up but it has to stop.

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It's usually been my experience that the old appliances and such were simply targets of opportunity for the shooters. They were'nt the ones that brought them there. The illegal dumpers who don't want to pay the landfill fee are the ones trashing up the place. If I ever came across freshly dumped stuff, and I was in my pickup truck, I got the hell out of there. If had been rained on a few times it was OK to shoot it up without the deputy happening by and thinking you put it there.

The county brings probationers with a community service sentence out to pick up trash on the roads and illegally dumped stuff.

So here's some cockeyed logic. If you don't litter, these probationers will simply be be enjoying a walk down a country road. Do your part to fight crime!! Help make community service a punishment!

There is strong sentiment, and in some places laws, against plinkers due to the trash they leave lying around. If we insist on being adults and using lethal weapons and destructible targets, then we ought to to at least take care of our own junk.

Whatever a shooter leaves behind will be found by some anti-gunner who will then think worse of shooters than he already does.

And who can blame him?

I
always wonder what some peoples living rooms look like??

Why not shoot the old TV in the living room??

SLOBS!!

I agree with picking up all the stuff ya shoot, but then again, there is stuff there that everyone uses to prop targets up against or to tape targets to. I don't want to be the guy to take away who knows how many peoples' target stand/backstop because it could also be called garbage. At the gravel pit I shoot at there is a fridge and a filing cabinet with new targets on it every time, and a whole bunch of old engine parts full of holes half way up a berm. If it's still getting used, it's not trash.

Great thread. Makes me feel very guilty for some glass I shamefully shot up in my days... Won't do that again.

Anyone noticed the price of scrap metal lately?

What with the economy and all we got a bunch of unemployed and retired people making a good pile of cash picking up brass and refridgerators and all manner of scrap metal around the countryside.

Younger ones dumpster dive small and large venues for aluminum soda cans.

A not so young entrepeneur collects plastic soda bottles in our non deposit state and once a month goes to a deposit state and collects cash.

Nicodemus38 said:

has anyone here looked at the residue of airsoft? thousands of little plastic pellets priced at 10 bucks for 2,000 at walmart. go through two boxes with your buddies and look at the residue ont he ground.

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I don't know about the Wally-World airsoft pellets, but the high-quality ones from Japan are biodegradable, and break down very quickly.

Great thread. When I was in the Boy Scouts, I was taught to always leave the outdoors cleaner than I found it. Police your own mess, and take away at least one extra piece of plastic or trash or aluminum when you leave. If everyone did that, then the mounds of trash found in some places would "evaporate" pretty quickly.

You aren't alone in anger, or alone in the possibility of havin yer spots closed :

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=641421

Use steel targets you can take with you.

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Actually, there are some fantastic rubber (or some kinda material) targets made by I believe Champion that are far better than steel and they last, and last and last. They do not ricochet bullets, and they can take hundreds if not thousands of hits.

As some of you know, I've written in the past, in Gun Week, SOF and elsewhere, about the swine who litter up gravel pits and other traditional shooting spots, especially on public land. They give us all a bad name.

Giving us a better name are people who use retrievable targets and who pick up their messes.

I've got a few of the above mentioned targets and they are the darnedest things I've ever shot at. Several are mounted on large frames so they spin when hit. Others honestly look like big orange or red steel plates. Some look like crows, squirrels, prairie dogs or other small varmints, and they are a hoot to shoot.

In my earlier years when I was just getting started in handloading, I always took a bag with me to such sites and picked up once-fired brass. The places were loaded with spent casings, and that's how I put together a rather formidable supply of empties. It's amazing to me the money that some goofs leave lying around for cheap &%%$%$s like me to pick up and re-use. God's gift to financially challenged gomers like me, I reckon.


Check out such targets. And remind others to clean up their messes.

Ya man, I hate the lazy people who leave their trash everywhere, it really bothers me. Not just at shooting spots, but in general. Every time I go shooting I bring a bag and pick up shotgun hulls and such, always leave with more stuff than I came with.

i havent seen too many appliances sitting around with scrap metal what it is these days. but i dont think it was the shooters that put them there i have shot up a old refigirator befor but it was because it was already there.

I've long been proud of my shooting group. They've always pitched in and cleaned up afterwards.

Someone took the filing cabinet that was a decent target holder (or blew it up into tiny, tiny bits), but the fridge is way past its usefulness. Next time I go, I'm going to bring the truck and haul that thing to the dump. Unfortunately, there are way to many shotgun hulls on the ground over the entire area of the gravel pit. We are talking 200x200 yds area roughly. So many in fact, the the gravel has already buried a whole bunch. I can't imagine the amount of brass that is buried under all that gravel over the years. I guess a year's worth of range trips/clean ups would help a lot. Just need to buy me a truck rake.

btw i guess i should add these days i shoot at a good friends house so clean up is manditory other wise the landlord would have a fit.

Ya man, I hate the lazy people who leave their trash everywhere, it really bothers me. Not just at shooting spots, but in general. Every time I go shooting I bring a bag and pick up shotgun hulls and such, always leave with more stuff than I came with.

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It seems to be the human condition to want to let someone else pick up after them. I live out in the sticks on an unpaved road which is just dandy for folks to drive who are drinking. Today my son and I picked up about 20 pounds of junk tossed out of people's windows, mostly beer cans and bottles. There was regular trash too, a chair and several rugs. None of the other neighbors, all 4, do it so we do a couple of times a year. Concerning the bottles. I often run my dogs in the ditch and take special care to get all the bottles I can find, broken and unbroken. And yes, when we go to the range we take home at least as much as we brought and sometimes a little more.