I always liked abandoned gravel pits for sighting in rifles and testing loads. A good deep pit is out of the wind and distractions. Plus it's about as safe a place to shoot as you could ask.

But secretly what I always like about my trips to these places was "The Hunt." Just as quick as I took care of business and sighted in a rifle or whatever, I'd stuff my pockets full of shells and start prowling the place for "targets of opportunity."

I suspect I'm not the only guy to spend an afternoon hunting around a junk yard or gravel pit.

What was your favorite target?

I think my favorite prey was a washing machine. Finding a freshly dumped, virgin washing machine with no bullet holes in it was a real thriller!

Bullet do some funny things with washing machines. Most things you run across in a junk yard, a good high powered rifle just blows a hole thru it and that's the end of the story. Washing machines can be different. VERY different. The problem is you have the outer shell of thin steel. Then you have the INNER drum of heavy gauge steel. Then ANOTHER inner drum or the actual washing tub, also of heavy gauge steel. And for complete penetration the bullet has to go thru EACH of these obstacles TWICE...going in and coming out. This amounts to SIX layers of steel the bullet must penetrate plus there is considerable empty space inside a washing machine where a bullet has room to start yawing or tumbling after blasting thru one of the layers of steel.

You see the problem. Bottom line is the simple washing machine can be like a tiger tank and any rifle bullet combination that will cut thru all that is pretty tough.

And if you get bored with trying to shoot holes in all the drums, start aiming thru the bottom of the machine where the transmission is. There usually a certain amount of gear oil down here and I've managed to set a couple washing machines on fire this way.

But the neatest feature of all is the lid. Any time you like as you shoot the WM from various angles and distances, you can stop and come open the lid and look down inside the machine. You don't have to guess where your bullets went and what they did. You've got a cross section of the whole thing waiting for your inspection.

Ahhhhhhh, them were the days. I figure a guy can do worse than be a hunter of washing machines.

Any of you have any junk yard confessions you want to make? They say confession is good for the soul.

I remember the VERY first shot I took from my 458 winchester was at a washing machine motor. I shot it with a WW-510 sp and sent it rolling over a burm. It did not penetrate the 10 odd pounds of coiled copper, but I assure you the motor never looked the same. I lived in Alaska at the time and our dump was loaded with bears, all day, every day so I was always packin something, even when I was dumping the family trash. Cats were everywhere and I would frag them behind any metal target they hid behind. You can catch things on fire by shooting them, thats for sure. I shot Jerrys shovel on his front end loader a bunch of times, he parked it at the dump... boy did I get in trouble for that.
I had shot quite a few sick bears at the dump, kinda sad when you would see them eating a glass mayo jar. Alot of them had lost hair on their arms and belly from standing in fires.
Microwaves, anything with a motor is always fun.

Well here's my insane confession,
every weekend, I visit all the local neighborhood gas stations and offer the owner's free pick up and removal of those 5 gallon propane tank's that cannot be refilled due to the E.P.A or the D.O.T regulation of which the safety valve's not meeting new regulation code. Sometime these tank's are 1/4 full or half empty. So what do I do with tank's? I shoot them in front of a small fire from a safe distance of 200 yards and let me tell you, it's a blast! talk about "huge" fire ball's, depending on the amount of propane in the tank. At least you will know that you hit your target without the use of binocular's. If you don't want to build a small fire, then have somebody shoot at the tank within a second after you pulled the trigger. Anybody else?

This one is more of a lesson learned and never forgotten. Three of us were shooting behind a buddy's house with an assortment of rifles and pistols one evening. It was getting close to dark when we noticed a dumped washing machine about 100yds downrange. Needless to say, our sights then became focused on this piece of "junk". We stopped when it was getting too dark to see and headed home. The next day we went out to see our "kill". Oh no!!! It wasn't a washing machine at all!!! My buddy's neighbor had parked a big grass catcher there that attaches to the back of a large lawn tractor. It had a gas motor to operate the vacuum. This thing was riddled with holes, including the engine. We went up to the neighbor and told him what we did, then proceeded to split the cost of a new grass catcher among the three of us. Boy, that was an expensive day at the "range".

Lesson learned: Always positively identify your target. Since then, I have always taken great care in knowing what I'm shooting at and where the bullet is going if I miss. It shouldn't have taken this stupid act to instill it, but I can say I'm a safer shooter for it happening.

Norse - Shooting propane tanks could indeed be interesting but down here in the dry southwest I'm afraid it would be a good way to burn down half the state! We gotta be way careful with fires.

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Jethro - You kids were pretty honorable to confess your sins. Many would have gone the other direction. As you say, an expensive lesson but perhaps worth it to all of you in the long run.

I did a lot of dump shooting when we had them. They are all filled and and gone now. The best part was shooting the rats Oh how many hundreds of rounds at them great fun. Lots of targets a good dump.

Peco45,
even in the winter in New Mexico? BTW, the fireball's only last a 1 to 2 second's. However I wouldn't know better since I've never stayed in a dry state very long.

p dog shooter,

We use to do the rat shoot at the dump when I was a kid. We use to take our allowance and get three or for boxes of 22 shorts and a spotlight and hit the dump on Friday and Saturday nights and have a ball. Lots of good practice on running targets. I think those were the good ol' days.

Neighbors cats!

Not exactly in the junkyard but as kids we prowled through a good expanse of woods and one day came upon an old, abandoned DeSoto. The "Untouchables" was in it's heyday at that point and we felt like Capone's hitmen shooting up that car; my two buddies with their semi-auto .22s and I working the bolt on my little Stevens as fast as I could.

Several years ago, while shooting on the desert with some friends, I noticed that the sweat bees were swarming and perching on empty shotgun shells. I had a Ruger 10/22 along and got to shooting sweat bees and having a ball. Soon the others were doing the same thing and thought it was a blast. The following morning my shooting partners presented me with a custom t shirt. The wording on the front was "Best Sweat Bee Guide West Of Coyote Canyon."Although it no longer fits it remains one of my most cherished posessions as all those guys are long gone to the big shooting range in the sky.

Bravo

What always amazed me, are these people who are to lazy to bring their old refridgerator or TV to the dump, but bring it 50 miles out in the middle of no where to fill full of lead!! Guess they figured after all these years they would put the old appliance down right (just wish they would pick up afterwards).
I remember a fun time blasting an old dump truck, as well as milk jugs filled with water then frozen. A kitty cat is just a bonus!!!
MG

MG - I've noticed the same phenomenon! Several times in my life I thought I must surely be walking where no man has stood before, only to come upon an old TV or hotwater heater shot full of holes. How these items get there, short of falling from the sky, I haven't a clue.

I used to dig a lot of mushroomed bullets and such out of things like this till I discovered they are a favorite nesting site for blackwidow spider. And I once picked up a length of stove pipe with a rattlesnake sleeping inside it. He wasn't amused.......but neither was I.

An old porcelain toilet with a big game rifle. Closest thing to a non-fireball explosion that I've ever seen. If you ever get the chance, don't pass it up.

irwin

irwin...
Is it okay to shoot if someone is still sitting on it ?

sure!!

That could be a quick fix for constipation.

Rooster: Notice your location; I lived in Morgan City for about 7 years on and off and nothing beat the town dump for rat shooting, especially at night. Nothing except slipping back into the bayous in the spring to snake hunt. Unless you count slipping into GrowJohns to pussy hunt.

Back in the late 60's before civilization encroached, there was easy access to a bank of the Trinity River where we could shoot. I learned that if you walked a ways off the road and put out some soured grain and old bread the big brown rats would soon show up. I learned more about trigger control and "game" shooting using a SAKO 243 with handloaded 75 gr HP's on that river bank than I ever have anywhere else. Got to where a small group of us would bet each other on a particular rat and the longer the shot the higher the bet would get. Buck a pop & winner take all. And the shots usually started at about 150 and went out to about 400 yards. I'd do that today if I could just find some place handy.
Ron

Brings me back to my childhood days at the nearest dump. Me and my Win mod 69 and abundant rats. If the action got slow my juvenile delinquent companions would "borrow" a couple buckets of crude from nearby and proceed to light up the dump. Nothing got the adrenaline up faster than shots at smoking burning rats scurrying around. Midnight trips with shotguns were popular in my teenage years too.

At the pawnshop where I work, we often "decommision" items that are defective before putting them in the dumpster. The hardest target yet was this big photocopier, we just could not get a through-and through shot with anything at the store.

I have a lot of fond memories of going shooting with my Grandfather at the local (Redwood City, Ca.) dump. You really
had to hit the rats in the right spot if your where using 22 shorts. Do they still make shorts? That was all I could afford then, they wouldn't even penetrate a car door, well sometimes ;-)

Also you could find some great used things people would throw away. I found the first (and best) screwdriver I ever owned at the dump. I would still have it but it "got lost" after I left home to join the Navy.

And we think we have progress today. "The good old days" where not so good in some ways (Roads, Cars and Health care all come to mind) but having less people and laws around had their good points.

Would I want to go back? well maybe, but not really. But I sure wouldn't mind having a dump to go shooting at

Found out early on that shooting old tires wasn't always a good idea. Sometimes they shoot back!

Cannuck,

So, you've noticed that also? I was 41 and shooting in a
"un-offical" dump outside of Sparks Nev. several years
ago with a 44 mag. and had a bullet go whistling right
past my (left) ear after I "shot" and old discarded tire.

Pretty scary

So there IS someone up there looking out for us after all.

Family friend owned about forty wooded acres in southwest Ohio in an "industrial park" that had been used as a dump sight in the past. We had all kinds of good times. The best though was when we found a early 70's model chevy with all the windows intact. At 12 years old this was the coolest thing we had ever seen. The old crossman 760's worked overtime on that bad boy. Second best would be a mountain of glass bottles apparently dumped in bulk. There were probably a couple thousand or so and it took six or seven trips before the mountain of bottles were reduced to shards. After all the entertainment of these items were depleted we developed a game in a field of lamb's ears. These wooly aromatic plants shoot up stalks with little purple flowers that attracted the biggest bumblebees that I have ever seen. The many hours shooting those damn bees probably did more for my shooting than anything else I have ever done. I really miss those damn bees and the times that my most pressing issue was that I was running low on my favorite brand of .177 pellets.

I can't wait for retirement except hopefully the bees will have become kudu and the .177 will have turned into premium .375's and a keg of my favorite powder.

Carl