Even'in reloaders,
Yep, it pays to keep your eyes open anytime your out.
A few years back, I was down an abandoned railroad grade below the town where I lived, making the trip a few miles down the canyon for the first morning of turkey season.
As some folk took their rigs down the RR grade, there was some shooting done in the area.
So, I had planned to stop at one location on the way home to check for brass.
Well, nothing much showed up, so saddled up the 4 wheeler and had gone just a short distance when I spotted some brass scattered along side the RR grade.
Got off Molly and started scrounging, headed home again and had gone just a short distance and found another batch.
After that, I began to find new and fired brass, loaded ammo, shotgun ammo and bullets scattered at about equal distances.
This continued for quite a ways, the "finds" always being of mixed components and or ammo. I finally started to check the other side of the RR grade and sure enough more of the same.
Before I found the brass, I found where someone had tourched a good sized plastic fishing tackle box which had contained lures and a bore sighter.
It appeared that someone had dumped all the components and ammo into a common box and tossed out handfulls of the stuff as they slowly drove down the canyon.
Sometime later, at the location of the tackle box tourching, I spotted a small pile of black material, which upon closer look, proved to be extruded powder.
Someone must have been very, VERY!!!!!!!! mad at someone else to go to all the effort of distroying their loading supplies.
I looked a number of time at locations like bridges for some fire arms, but not that lucky.
I still have some of the components, for example a nice bag full of 30 cal, 220gr Nosler partitions, still around. Could do with another find like that and maybe this time they'd leave some hardware scattered about with the rest of the stuff. Can always hope.
It was suggested the stuff might have been stolen, but if it was going to be gotten rid of, there are much better and quicker ways then taking the time to drive down a narrow and bumpy RR grade while throwing the stuff out the window one handfull at a time.
A quick stop at a bridge, in the RR canyon or else where would have been much quicker, but wouldn't have vented near as much steam as this effort did.
Stolen, Nope someone was just very mad!
As far as using range brass, it depends on what the use is and what the firearm is.
For hunting, probably not, but for just banger brass especially with "reduced loads" not a problem
Keep em coming!
CDOC