Yeah, they’re rocks in the same sense that batteries are minerals.
And I didn’t say anything about clearcutting. This is selective hardwood harvesting done by people who thought it was “no big deal” and assumed they were being “ecologically sensitive” by only taking 80 year old oaks. Qualify it all you like, the impact is severe.
A part of me misses going to the unsupervised range in the middle of Apalachicola National Forest (just off of John Wayne Court, you can’t miss it!) and doing dumb stuff like this while meeting/being paranoid about other people in attendance. Once I met a Ted Nugent lookalike that the further back in memory this encounter goes I swear it must have actually been Ted Nugent.
Anyway point is a much bigger part of me doesn’t miss it and admits none of this was actually that cool or interesting. Also fuck Ted Nugent.
For a bit more destruction of glass orbs, see video below. These Aussies have lots of videos dropping things from the 45 meter tower, and sometimes get pretty creative on doing so.
They are quite boisterous, however, so you may want to start with the volume low, especially if you are wearing headphones.
He’s also a veterinarian, which is how I discovered his channels.
You’d think he might have guessed about inhaling atomized glass…
hopefully the always present smell of cordite will keep them away. There was an outdoor range near me that was decommissioned; it had to be treated as a hazardous waste site due to all the lead in the surrounding berms…tons of it apparently.
I am sure most of it is going to get picked up because, people don’t want random shards of glass lying around. Especially if he has pets running around.
Depending where you are, lots of natural rocks like flint leave sharp bits all over the ground. Obsidian is literally volcanic glass. Decorative lava rock is extremely abrasive on bare feet. With the big bits picked up, just like any other small rocks rocks, the tiny ones get ground into the earth, and covered up with debris. I think the animals will be just fine.
And an even more annoying danger would be natural thorns, which I have had dogs get in their paws before. Or larger man made things barbed wire fences, or rusty metal that all farms tend to accumulate.
I too am very pro LNT, but its obviously an area set up as a shooting range and thus sequestered. Danger to animals is going to be pretty minimal. Let’s not make a mountain out of molehill here.
Oh man - these guys. They are living out every young boys dream of dropping shit from great heights and seeing how it breaks.
And who’s supposed to be the crystal ball this time?
I actually am concerned about environmental lead from shooting sports. I was talking to an RO at the local range ran by the Wildlife Department. He said that while the pistol and rifle ranges have bullet traps instead of berms, the shot gun ranges shoot into a hill and periodically they will scrape off the earth and sift out the lead for recycling.
Range berms could be done the same way. There depths a bullet can go into solid earth isn’t that deep.
Informal and private ranges don’t have this ability, but also the amount we are talking are much, much less.
In general, more brittle (harder) things will spall more than softer (ductile). State of the art in armour for a long time was to have face hardened metal (which encouraged incoming rounds to bounce off rather than dig in) backed by softer metal which resists spalling.
Pedant point: glass isn’t a crystal
Lead shot is (largely) illegal here for exactly that reason.
lead shot used for hunting is also a problem…spent shot gets picked up by birds for their craw, and ducks ingest it when it’s underwater. It’ll kill them, often migratory birds that would otherwise be protected. Here in Canada lead shot is largely illegal, although people can use lead buckshot for hunting game I think. That’s mostly a prairie practice I think, where I grew up no one would hunt game with a shotgun because of trees/brush. I agree with your remarks about barb wire, farm implements, etc being more of an injury risk. I’ve been places where you think to yourself “no human has ever been here” and then you step on a rusty license plate from 1924 
One time I encountered a grove of lilies of the valley in what I thought was untouched forest. A little searching found the remains of an ornamental garden probably abandoned for 100 years…no sign of a dwelling, though
EDIT: Spalling
FWIW, Lead shot is illegal here US for waterfowl hunting (hunting around water), using steel or bismuth instead.
That sounds like a neat find! My friend bought an old farm house, and slowly realized the reasons for some of the lay of the back yard and such was due to some garden or some other structure previously there but either sunken in over time, or removed.
you’re making me pine for the early internet; “Glass is a liquid!!” “No! Glass is a solid!!” “Glass is supercooled !!” “Glass is a crystal!!”. After a few days of that, someone would bring up the “Monty Hall problem” and the cycle would repeat
We have an old, filled in well crib in our backyard. Thought it was an ornamental border for a flower bed, until I tried to remove it I hope but don’t expect that it’s clean fill all the way down. One thing I have encountered in the bush once or twice is long abandoned grave sites … Where I grew up you would occasionally find depressions on the ground where Teepees had been sited many years prior
I did this too!
My two friends were like, “We found this old grave yard. Come on we will show you.” And then we went on this rather long, meandering journey which was in an area I’d never gone outside the small town I was in. But we found it. It was completely over grown with grass, and the stones were very old. I remember the newest head stone was from the 50s when the person died, and most were much older. I remember there was one set of old fake flowers, so someone at some point must stop by occasionally. There were a couple crypts and a lot of lamb head stones for children. We then went home a different way, seeing that there was a dirt road on the other end of the yard. Turns out it was the road that turned into my street, and we could have saved some time going this way to get there.
In this guy’s near future - “Dr. Darwin will see you now.”
what I’ve encountered has been 19th c , wooden crosses. Not too uncommon for people to be buried on their farms. I live in a part of the city that was subdivided in the 1950s; there is house about two blocks from us with a grave in the front yard. Must have been put there later than 1960. Wouldn’t happen now of course, but it was farmland outside city limits when it was subdivided.
There’s a good reason for that
serious edit: graves in front yards is super common in the Cook Islands. I suspect it’s a combination of fairly limited land availability and wanting to keep previous generations close.
Edit: wow, this topic is really wandering 
Yeah, I was in the Ozarks on a little horse riding tour, and we went by where there were 3 or 4 grave stones. Evidently there was a small battle during the Civil War on that person’s land, and they buried the soldiers who who died on their land.
I just did some googling, and found out there is some mention of that lost cemetery. I think it is here:
Probably somebody already said this (no time to read all comments right now) but if so it needs saying again
The ‘fine folks’ here were not fine enough to put down some tarps and collect the glass shards. So now a chunk of countryside is covered in bits of sharp glass debris just so they could get some kicks and clicks.
Frankly? Fuck them.
@AndreaJames - not a wonderful thing at all.
