As the pops of gunfire echo around him, Monte Petersen stoops to collect small brass casings that recently flew from his .45 pistol. The cartridges jingle like loose change as he picks them off the gun range floor and tosses them into a bucket.Petersen is one of thousands, perhaps millions, of target shooters who take their shooting hobby further: Recycling their ammunition cartridges and assembling new cartridges by hand to shoot again.They call it “reloading” their ammunition. It’s a passion project, money-saver and hands-on hobby all wrapped into one.
Recycle. Reload. Reuse.
On a weekday morning at Eagle Gun Range in Lewisville, Texas, Petersen tours the range while his buddy Jim Payne readies his cartridges in his booth.When Petersen fires a gun, the bullet shoots out of the barrel. What’s left behind is a brass casing that held the bullet, the primer and the gunpowder. The package, called a cartridge, is often referred to as a “round.”The brass cartridges are reusable.So after the shooting is done, reloaders like Payne and Petersen get to work, scouring the gun range floor for good brass. Between them, they have about 70 years of combined reloading experience.“Reloading is basically taking your empty brass that’s already been fired and then putting all the components back into it to make it so it’s just like new again,” Petersen said. “So you can shoot it again, but at a much reduced cost.”The gun range rule: Reloaders can pick up only their own brass.A 50-round box of .45 ACP pistol ammunition typically costs about $26. Petersen says he can reload spent casings for just $8 worth of materials, saving him $18. A target shooter might use 100 or 200 rounds in a typical visit.Petersen saves about $24 reloading 50 rounds for a .357 pistol, he says. So it saves some money. But it’s also just fun to customize cartridges.“I’ve never had a gun yet I couldn’t make shoot better than most factory rounds,” Petersen said.
