The plinking was largely indicative of boredom, but there's more than 
boredom involved in the salvaging-of-misfires operations indicated by the 
knife-punched slits in your shell casings.

In my own family's case, we salvaged the lead-and-powder for re-use in 
shotgun shells ... both for re-loading discharged shells, and for converting 
or adapting one size/purpose to another.

My grandfather had a big-ol' double-barrel ten-guage, and he never bought 
but one size of shotgun shells for it (No. 7 bird-shot), yet he used the 
same gun for successfully hunting squirrels/deer/panther/bear. The recovered 
.22-cal slugs were used, without alteration, to adapt the No. 7 birdshot 
shells to something approximating 00-buckshot ... the preferred size for 
deer. It was a simple matter of prying open the crimped ends of shotgun 
shells, pouring out the 'store-bought" shot, and pouring in .22-cal slugs 
(by the age of 8, I was using this method for converting No. 7 birdshot 
shells to 00-buckshot for my .410-guage shotgun ... I also used manufactured 
air-gun BB's to convert the birdshot to the proper size for hunting 
squirrels). My grandfather would cast his own 10-guage slugs (he had a 
two-piece mould especially for that purpose) for bear/mountain-lions. I've 
seen him make squirrel/varmint (possums, weasels, minks, foxes and 
preternaturally-large rats, mainly) shot by chopping-up larger slugs from 
misfires (including .22-cal) into a sort of hash, with a hatchet.

My grandfather even re-loaded his expended 10-guage shells ... using powder 
from misfires (he claimed the 'newfangled' powder in the .22-cal cartridges 
was more powerful and of a better quality [burned cleaner] than that 
commonly provided in 'store-bought' shotgun shells). He used an icepick to 
punch-out the expended primers, then a special punch (one came with the box 
of primer caps) to drive in new ones (the punch was basically a hollow tube 
that only contacted the primer at the edges, staying away from the center 
where the "bidness" or actuator was located). On a rare occassion, the 
primer would go-off whenever he was seating them, tapping them into place 
using the punch and a mallet, but this was no big deal (nor dangerous). He 
had a hole in the top of his workbench (rather than a bored hole, it may 
have just been a fortuitously sized knot-hole .... all his outbuildings were 
constructed from knotty pine ... discards from a nearby peckerwood mill) in 
which he inserted the shotgun shells for seating new primers ... if they 
discharged, the 'blast' (we never referred to such a puny pop as a 'blast') 
was safely directed downward, underneath the bench ... and the caps aren't 
very powerful, at all (probably about the same force/loudness as the 
cap-pistols we used in those days).

Bob Skiles

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Avery, Paul" <[log in to unmask]>

Is this just random behavior indicative of boredom or is there more to
it than that?