Small business travels the country recycling lead from shotgun pellets at firing ranges

Cleaning up all the shotgun pellets at firing ranges might not seem like the most glamorous or interesting job in the world, but one company has made a killing getting the lead out. Rocky Mountain Shot Recovery, out of Utah, takes to the road, hitting 48 states and traveling 50,000 to 60,000 miles a year to clean up firing ranges, Brett French reports for the Billings Gazette. (French photo: Anthony Fuller shows how lead shot is sifted out of gun-range soil and separated into 50-gallon barrels)

The company spends about one month working at Billings Rod and Gun Club in Saddleback Trail, Mont., where RMSR owner Anthony Fuller said they should recover about 400,000 pounds of lead on just the skeet range, French writes.

"A front-end loader scrapes the topsoil into a pile, then hauls full buckets that are dumped into a rotating hopper. The company has a proprietary piece of specially built equipment that sifts the dirt, screens out the lead into 50-gallon barrels and kicks out the remaining dirt," French writes. "Once the shot is separated into 50-gallon barrels that weigh about 3,000 pounds each, the lead is dumped into a rotating buffer — not unlike one that polishes rocks — to be shined for resale. Fuller either ships the recycled shot to Louisiana, where it is reused, or sells it back to the gun club where he’s working." (Read more)