An unfortunate circumstance

[u/Florida_Man42069]

I went to one of my favourite shooting spots yesterday and was sad to see the sheer amount of garbage left at the spot. There were literally thousands of shells on the ground. There was a car door in the field riddled with bullet holes, wooden and paper targets left in the field and endless brass. I know the vast majority of people on this subreddit are the people who clean up their brass at the end of their session, but please next time you go out shooting bring a garbage bag. Me and my friend only shot about 30 shells and a 150 .22 rounds, but I took home probably 500 shells in a garbage bag and that didn’t even cover 1/10 of the place. There is a spot nearby here that was shut down recently due to unsafe firearms use, and people leaving garbage behind. I have only been shooting for about a year and a half and I would hate to see my hobby go down the drain because people don’t want to take 10 minutes to clean up. About 45 minutes before we left, 2 other people came to our spot to shoot and saw that we were cleaning up other people’s shells. One guy thanked us and said it’s a good thing we were doing that. We already have a government who wants to target our hobby, don’t give them a reason to do so.

[u/HappyCan7250]

I stop and pickup all my brass everytime I have to reload, which is pretty frequently since we're Canadians! I find its easier to grab 5-10 shells every 2min than to try and pickup 100 or 150 at the end. I also plan to start reloading soon, so it's worth saving all the brass. Honestly, even if you don't reload or plan to, it doesn't hurt to pickup your brass to give it away to someone who will, kill 2 birds with one stone, someone will be happy to take it off your hands for free if you don't want a bunch of empty brass around. If you save up a decent amount of a specific caliber, and can clean it half decently, some guys will even buy it if you post it on Gunpost too.

Another one too is clays, and I know that can be hard to avoid or clean up, but it also looks pretty bad when there is thousands of tiny pieces of orange laying all over an area. I found out recently it doesn't really actually break down (I had assumed it did since they're "clays"), but shooting a lot of clays can also make an area look pretty bad, and there is no real good easy way to clean them up unfortunately. I think we all should be a bit mindful of where we shoot clays, and try to minimize the mess from them as well. While cleaning them up is tough, even using black ones in some spots might be better to it's not quite such a bright orange eye sore. 

I honestly wish someone would come out with some biodegradable clays, that break down after something like 30-60 days. To my knowledge, there isn't actually any