Nothing but footprints?

  One of my biggest pet peeves with shooting culture is the crap that gets left behind at shooting sites. For some reason, jerkoffs think that they can haul a bunch of garbage out into the woods, blast at it all afternoon, then casually stroll away without picking up after themselves. This is squarely against what my father and the Boy Scouts taught me - Pack it in, Pack it out. Take only Pictures, Leave only Footprints... Isn't that what we, as the supposed Stewards of the Wilderness are supposed to be doing? What the hell possesses someone to bring a 1960's era console TV out into the woods, blow it to hell, and leave it out there? Are the magical forest sanitation gnomes supposed to sweep it up when you aren't looking?

  When my posse of friends go out in the woods to make sudden loud noises, we have a rule. You pick up all YOUR material, including targets and spent cartridges, but you *ALSO* pick up a reasonable amount of left-behind trash. Usually, this amounts to a garbage bag per vehicle, which is a tolerable amount.

  For some reason, the waste that really sets me off is all the spent brass that's left around. What the fuck, guys? I've kept all of the brass we've picked up in the last three outdoor adventures we've had and last night, I brought it out to look at, sort, and be vocally pissed about while doing so.

   This is the bag we ended up tucking everything in

  I weighed it out - TEN POUNDS of brass, and none of that is our own brass, that's all stuff we picked up off the ground. 

  It's not all cheap milspec grarbage, either. Lookit the shiny on this 6mm Rem case!

  Likewise on this .30-06 case. There was a LOT of .30-06, which is nice - my main hunting rifle is .30-06

   It took me about an hour and a half to hand-sort all of that nasty, old, dirty brass into convenient wax paper sammich bags for storage until I can tumble them and then reload or sell them.

I ended up with bags labeled:
.30-06
6MM Rem
.243 Win
.30-30
.454 Casul
.45 LC
.45 ACP
.357 Mag
.38 SPL
9x19
9MM Luger (Yeah, I know this is the same as 9x19, but I was going strictly by headstamps. it's easier to pattern-match that way)
.380 ACP
.30 Carbine
7.62

  There was also a "crap" bag, filled with sun-rotted 12ga shotgun hulls and the rusted 5.56 and 7.62 Eastern Bloc surplus made with the rustingest cases ever, and a small bag of "UNKNOWN" - I couldn't tell what it was just from the headstamp. A little research should sort those out in a few minutes.

  The rimfire bag (.22 LR, .22Mag, and .177 HMR)was much smaller than I expected

  Seriously here, people. We outdoorsmen and sportsmen talk a big fucking game about how we're the REAL stewards of the outdoors, and how it's important to preserve nature. We whine and cry like spoiled little snots about the ATTACKS ON OUR FREEDOMZ!!11OneELEBENTY when folks indicate that maybe, somewhere, there's a problem that we could possibly address. We scream and bitch about how THOSE EVIL SOSHULIST LIE-BRUAL QUEERFAGS are trying to take our guns and put us in FEMA camps. We sneer at environmentalists and call 'em treehuggers and bunnyfuckers.

  We parade around like a squadron of buffoons when we feel like our rights are under attack, Which is, apparently, every second of every day. What we DON'T do is carry out the responsibilities that are implicit and complicit with the rights that we're granted.

  Why SHOULD anyone take us seriously, and treat us as anything more than children when our own recreation sites are dirty, shabby and full of garbage? How is that supposed to project an impression of responsibility and authority on matters of any consequence?

  If we want to be taken seriously, and work together to identify issues (and common ground) then we need to act like responsible fucking adults, and clean up after ourselves. If we can't be trusted to manage the places where we like to go and play, why in God's great name SHOULD anyone trust us to do the right thing anywhere else?

  It's not that hard. Pack it in, pack it out. Leave nothing but footprints.