Monday, October 14, 2019

Ammunition, wee lad

My first contacts with ammunition were at the shore of the Chesapeake.

My grandparent lived right on the water near Pt. No Point.  A great place for a kid to visit.  There were inlets nearby for crabbing, and there were plywood shacks over the water I couldn't get to.  I was told that these were duck blinds.  The whole area would be great for hunting ducks.  Flat, lots of shallow protected waterways, away from the bay proper.  Farm fields bordering.

Along the shore shotshells would wash up, and we picked up any old interesting thing we saw on the beack, including these.  They were often colorful, too.  Red green and yellow. Invariably, in the early 70s, there were high brass and plastic casing.  Later, the metal part was more often rusted.  Steel.  Usually plastic, 12 gauge, but sometimes .410.

I was an adult before I ever saw a cardboard shotgun case.  Maybe those rotted away in the water.

Was there a time when paper crossed over to mostly plastic?

I don't even remember seeing any ducks, ever, tho.  Near the water and away froim bird feeders in Paw Paws yard there was little bird variety  Saw lots of gulls.  Osprey and osprey nests on navigation markers.  Might have saw a bald eagle in 1978 way off in the distance.  Then in '85 I saw 2 bald eagles fly over head close enough I could have thrown a baseball up to them.  I don't remember 2 or 3 mallards in all that time.  And no other ducks.


2 comments:

ASM826 said...

That video takes me back. Just the hair-dos on the factory workers are a reminder of the past.

Waxed paper hulls were still a thing in the mid '60s when I was learning to reload. Paper hulls could only be reloaded a time or two. The plastic hulls were better for reloading. We had a heated die that you ran them through that reshaped the tops. The crimping die was adjustable for height and you wanted it to just overlap the opening so that shot didn't dribble out of the loaded shells.

Ritchie said...

The last I noticed, paper hulls were still used in competition.
Quite an involved process, with rolling, trimming, waxing, baking, etc.