fall break part 2: mining

Nick told me he found five pounds in an hour. I didn't believe him: I said "Nick, you're a liar." So I went out and found fifteen pounds in an hour. I came back and said "Nick, you're not a liar, you're a f--kin' slacker."
--Mike Beratta


The rifle range has been open since 1966 (I think) and until now no one has thought to mine it for lead. When kids shoot .22s they have to return the brass casings which are then exchanged for a couple bucks, but when the bullets hit the targets or the birm or the clays, we just leave them there.

Well, not anymore. Mike had over 100 pounds of lead by the time we got to camp, and he took us to the rifle range--about a half mile from the parade field--to mine some more.




During the summer, staffers from shooting and eco-con (when they teach astronomy) tell stories: the rifle range looks like a sandy crater, and gullible campers easily believe that a meteor landed there a few years ago. You have to go down a sandy hill to get to the blockhouse and shooting pavilion, then you shoot right into a sandy birm opposite. (I can't find "birm" in any dictionary, and I've never heard the word outside this context. The birm is the sandy wall you shoot into.) We went to the birm and Mike showed us the mine.

There was no ominous, clanky elevator descent inside the earth, no black lungs, no fog of soot--just a couple pig buckets, a shovel, and a wooden-framed screen.

We shoveled sand onto the screen and sieved it through, leaving rocks, clay pigeon fragments, sticks, marijuana, maple leaves, and bullets.




We did some sorting at the birm--removed anything big or alive. Everything else we dumped into a pig bucket.
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The orange shards are clay pigeon fragments. If you look closely, you can see bullets. Some are smashed; some are not.
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Mike drove us to the shop. During the summer, he gave us talks on limiting the amount of people on a golf cart, but all four of us piled on with our buckets of lead and rocks. Levi came with us.



Bob and Mike rinsed off the rocks and lead while Jason and I drove back to the range to drop off a pan of rocks. When Jason and I returned, we had a table of wet rocks and lead to sort.

It was a Kalkaska October evening, and by the time we were done, our hands were numb. I went to the shop bathroom to rinse off my hands, and Mike called to me over his shoulder:

"Make sure you put the seat back up when you're done."

I had already kicked it back up.
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We had a nice bucket of lead. I had to crouch down and push up with my legs to lift it.
Bob tried lifting it by the handle and it snapped and broke, spilling lead all over the shop floor.
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A handful or two of lead went into the ladle and we melted it with the gas torch. Tapping on the side of the ladle would bring any leftover dirt to the top: the lead, heavier, would sink. Within a couple minutes, we had a ladle of pure lead to pour into the molds.
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The round molds worked pretty well;
the army man molds had to be heated and sometimes they wouldn't work. I used Mike's pocket knife to trim an army man and ended up taking his arm off. We put the broken army men back into the ladle and melted them down again.

Then all that was left to do was trim the edges.