[hmb]

The first thing to do is to take walk through the trap fields at your club. Look for "sweet spots" places where the lead shot has collected on top of the ground. If you are lucky you will find a number of places where the lead has collected. It will resemble a carpet, possibly an inch thick, and fairly clean. These are the places you want to harvest.

I like to use a spackle bucket, flat shovel or dust pan, and an auto windshield ice scraper and brush to gather the lead. Scrape it up and pour it through a coarse screen into the bucket. When the top of the screen gets dirty, just brush it off and continue collecting. Keep checking the bucket to make sure you can lift it, it gets heavy fast.

When I get home I use a fine screen to get rid of the sand and a vacuum for the final cleaning. HMB

 

[KENENT1]

you should be able to see the shot on the ground, we just cut the sod up on a plot 3' x 3' and got about 100 lbs.



tony

 

[JerryP]

If your club throws lots of targets plenty shot will be on top of the ground. If the ground is not level rain will wash the shot into clusters. This is what hmb is describing. This is the shot I would be after and not the nasty stuff in the ground.

 

[Herb Roach]

I have a different problem from those posted here. We shoot into a woods about 80 yds from trap house. The trees no longer have tops for at least 20 ft into the woods. Leaves are at least 6 inches thick, so all the shot is not on top, nor is all of it on the bottom, it is intermixed at different levels in the leaves. Also, where in the woods would I look for an accumulation of shot. I went over one day during the summer and got one 5 gal. bucket but didn't get enough shot to encourage me to go back. Herb Roach

 

[smsnyder]

Dyson vacuum cleaner. lol

 

[wolfram]

I don't know of a way to do this that won't make you feel like you have put in a hard days work but here the best I have come up with .... I found the sweet spot of the drop zone visually, it was obvious as there was a lot of shot just sitting on the surface. I then just swept up some of this top material using a stiff straw broom and a shovel. At this point I had about 50% shot mixed with sand and small rocks and some sticks. About 1/2 of a five gallon bucket was about all I wanted to lift. It took about an hour to get 10 of these 1/2 filled buckets. Next, the dirt/shot mix was dumped into a wheel barrow and filled this water about 2" obove the solids and the wheelbarrow was agitated back and forth like a slice box. This motion separated the high density lead from the sand/dirt/junk. The low density material is then removed from the wheel barrow and the washing is repeated until you are satified the shot is about as clean as you are going to get it. Then I scoop up about 10 pounds of shot in a 12 Mesh sieve and give it a final wash with a spray hose. The clean shot is then dried in the sun and finally graphited in a case polisher.

Next yeild was about 300 pounds of moderate quality shot for a pretty hard day's work. I do better at my regular job.

 

[quartering]

why not just heat the ground to about 3000 degrees for about 90 seconds with a propane torch and just pick up the lead ingots? good luck with it

 

[Auctioneer]

Put up a shot certain(sp) They had one at the Greek Olympic's. It will catch all the shot and all you have to do is sweep it up each day.

 

[Mohave60]

Try a lead magnet, wish I had one Gary