Darrington Pit Shooting

[HighlandLofts]

Lot of shooters here have get together s to clean up shooting spots to keep them from being closed. Maybe some who live around you could get together for a clean up there.

Alex
Very few people are interested in doing pit clesn ups. I always pick up shotgun hullsb steel rifle & pistol cases and brass every trip we take every weekend from spring until winter comes and we can not get back in the woods to the pit.
I have two magnets with a release builtin the handle for picking them up. I bought them from Harbor Freight for about $10 a piece. Best $20 I ever spent. I haul the cases & hulls in three gallon buckets I get for free at the bakery at our lucal Safeway store.

The shotgun hulls I generally put in the plastic grocery store bags, tie them up and toss two away when I stop & get gas or anywhere else that has trash cans.

The steel rifle & pistol cases grt dumped inthe metal recycling dumpster at the transfer station a few blocks from our place.

The brass we pick up gets seperated, cleaned and reused by us, tradedb or given away. The garbage brass is tossed into a bucket and taken to the scrap yard when Mason turns in his aluminum cans.
He has $136 saved up.

Maybe next month I will try to put together a pit clean up day on a Saturday or Sunday.

I think I will check around Darrington and see if there is some one who will let us dump the garbage in their dumpster. If not i guess I will pay gor the dump fee at the transfer station.








This magnet is the key to.picking up the garbage shotgun hulls & steel rifle & pistol cases. $10 at Harbor Freight.

One time we went shooting we didn't pick up any shotgun hulls or steel rifle & pistol cases.
We picked up twenty-two pounds of brass.

 

[Heyjoe]

Looks fun. EPS is a cool cat.

 

[DLS]

Family shooting especially with kids … priceless!

A very clean place to shoot (compared to what I have access to) is just an added blessing beyond measure!

I too take out more than I bring in … but only usually a small bag each week to fill the empty space in my home trash bin. It would be easy to pick up more, but getting rid of it is a chore.

Joe (NWFA's honcho) used to give a bronze level to anybody who would pick up three bags of trash and post pictures on the site here. I'll bet he still does … I'll look for the link and post it here.

 

[DLS]

3 Bags of Trash = NWFA Bronze Membership!

Here's the link to the 3 bags of trash forum. It's not too active (unfortunately) and I can't speak for NWFA about continuing to offer the Bronze Supporter status, but regardless picking up this stuff is the right thing to do! But I'm now hijacking a thread so I'll stop !

 

[Alexx1401]

Alex
Very few people are interested in doing pit clesn ups. I always pick up shotgun hullsb steel rifle & pistol cases and brass every trip we take every weekend from spring until winter comes and we can not get back in the woods to the pit.
I have two magnets with a release builtin the handle for picking them up. I bought them from Harbor Freight for about $10 a piece. Best $20 I ever spent. I haul the cases & hulls in three gallon buckets I get for free at the bakery at our lucal Safeway store.

The shotgun hulls I generally put in the plastic grocery store bags, tie them up and toss two away when I stop & get gas or anywhere else that has trash cans.

The steel rifle & pistol cases grt dumped inthe metal recycling dumpster at the transfer station a few blocks from our place.

The brass we pick up gets seperated, cleaned and reused by us, tradedb or given away. The garbage brass is tossed into a bucket and taken to the scrap yard when Mason turns in his aluminum cans.
He has $136 saved up.

Maybe next month I will try to put together a pit clean up day on a Saturday or Sunday.

I think I will check around Darrington and see if there is some one who will let us dump the garbage in their dumpster. If not i guess I will pay gor the dump fee at the transfer station.

View attachment 567135

View attachment 567136

View attachment 567137

View attachment 567138
This magnet is the key to.picking up the garbage shotgun hulls & steel rifle & pistol cases. $10 at Harbor Freight.

One time we went shooting we didn't pick up any shotgun hulls or steel rifle & pistol cases.
We picked up twenty-two pounds of brass.

Couple of the members here will be glad to lend a hand getting a clean up going. They schedule many of them. Get with the Trash no land guys and see what you can get going. Believe me if I had a pit around me I would be doing it on a regular basis. Miss being able to drive to a place like that to shoot. Get a handful of guys and a couple trucks and you can make an amazing difference while having some fun and food at the same time.

 

[HighlandLofts]

DLS
You are not hijacking the thread. Any word of cleaning up these pits in any thread that others read is a good thing. It might inspire some one to take a couple of bags to pick trash up.
It would be nice if guys would be nice to see people leave some firewood at the pits so others can have a fire and burn some of the garbage.

Ed is a stand up guy, I'm happy to of made a friendship with him.
Thank you for everything, a great time full of memories.

 

[Makers Mark]

Nice job, Highlands and company. Looks like a lot of fun.

I too have had good luck using the HF magnetic pick up tool for steel cases. My son and I have been looking at the use of tarps layed over the area of the firing line to try and capture some of the various cases.

And then when done shooting, two (or more) people pick up the sides of the tarp and 'walk' the cases to the center, and then to one end, and then funnel them into the 5 gallon buckets.

Sometimes though, that's easier said than done.
Tarps don't work well if its raining. Sometimes you get so many varying trajectories of the ejected cases that you are only able to capture a portion of them. (but that's still better than none). Sometimes you can influence this by moving the firing line forward or rearward on the tarp depending on how a majority of the cases are falling.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

 

[DLS]

I agree on the tarps, they don't always work and if they are on the cheap side hot rounds melt themselves onto the surface! If the weather is fair I've found the cheap 12 x 15 canvas drop cloths sold by Harbor Freight work well. They get very dirty but who cares? I try to keep the same side down on the ground and that helps.

I've also used a pop up cover and hung tarps around three sides, then shoot from inside the cover. It keeps all the brass in a 10 x 10 area and if a tarp is down it's easy to grab the brass. You do lose visibility from three directions though, so a safety system needs to be in place for anybody walking around the cover. I've also just hung one tarp on the side and that works almost as well and keeps visibility less encumbered.

 

[EPS]

Looks like a fun time and a very nice pit! For the most part an opposite experience from what I had today. I just recently got a little S10 that used to be my 4x4 rig running again and I took it up to Green Mountain to see if she would survive a little road time... Man, what a bubbleguming dump up there. People are really crap sometimes. The "shooting pits" themselves are a disaster of course, but I was blown away at the amount of garbage either dumped in bags or beer/liquor bottles lining the roads. Crazy.

Oh well, ran a few mags through one of my pistols and the truck survived so there is always that.

I thought you were going to say it got stuck or broke down.
Believe it or not my nephew got that big white Ford truck stuck yesterday.
That thing turns like a ship lol .
He tried to make it around a sharp turn leaving the pit .
And had to back up and went off the road in a ditch.
Lol we had to use the black Dodge to jerk it out

 

[HighlandLofts]

That is a really sharp turn. I'm sure other larger trucks got stuck trying to make it. The other way in is easier to get in until they block it off with them concrete blocks.

 

[EPS]

That is a really sharp turn. I'm sure other larger trucks got stuck trying to make it. The other way in is easier to get in until they block it off with them concrete blocks.

Just inexperienced in driving that truck and back roads .
I knew it when he left I should have told him go right and find a spot big enough to turn around.

 

[HighlandLofts]

If he would of turned right there is a road on the left side about a mile up that he could of used to get turned around.

 

[EPS]

If he would of turned right there is a road on the left side about a mile up that he could of used to get turned around.

Well when we pulled him out we went right .
There is a wide spot less than 50 yards up the road.
LOL

 

[EPS]

Nice job, Highlands and company. Looks like a lot of fun.

I too have had good luck using the HF magnetic pick up tool for steel cases. My son and I have been looking at the use of tarps layed over the area of the firing line to try and capture some of the various cases.

And then when done shooting, two (or more) people pick up the sides of the tarp and 'walk' the cases to the center, and then to one end, and then funnel them into the 5 gallon buckets.

Sometimes though, that's easier said than done.
Tarps don't work well if its raining. Sometimes you get so many varying trajectories of the ejected cases that you are only able to capture a portion of them. (but that's still better than none). Sometimes you can influence this by moving the firing line forward or rearward on the tarp depending on how a majority of the cases are falling.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Next time I won't bring so many guns .
And I can haul out more trash LOL

 

[HighlandLofts]

A lot of that stuff can be burned up. Some dumped in the metal recycle bins and the rest taken to the transfer station. Somebody burned a bunch of tires so there is a lot of that steel wire from inside of the tires that i haven't delt with. Maybe take some heavy cardboard boxes to put it in to make it easier to dump out of the truck. Or maybe a steel drum and toss everyting in the recycle bin.

 

[EPS]

Another picture.
Hmmmmm when I got there this box was full of ammo and was organized.
By the end of day .
It's just a mess of empty Mags.

 

[HighlandLofts]

There sure was a bunch of brass on the ground. Do you have any idea how many rounds everyone went through? That was about six plus hours of non-stop shooting mostly semi auto firearms.

 

[EPS]

There sure was a bunch of brass on the ground. Do you have any idea how many rounds everyone went through? That was about six plus hours of non-stop shooting mostly semi auto firearms.

Over a thousand rounds of just 5.56.
And 300 rounds of 300 BLACK out.
I know that for sure.
I will have to count the empty AK mag's they all where full .now they are empty
And I think I had around 25 or 30 .
I think about 500 rounds of 9mm.
And I have no idea how much 22

 

[DLS]

So for you Oregon shooters … at 20 rounds per month that's at least 12.5 years worth of shooting!

 

[EPS]

So for you Oregon shooters … at 20 rounds per month that's at least 12.5 years worth of shooting!

Lol