David, this sounds like a possible big problem for the DEA to me--think I'll keep it in the box for a while (Sure don't want "flower power" to get out of hand...again...).
I try to pick up my spent shotshells, but it only works when the hunting is slow. When the shooting gets fairly hectic, I tend to forget some of the empties! Most of my doubles have ejectors, and that doesn't help with the litter problem, either. Actually my Ithaca 37s are less objectionable in this regard since they dump the empties on your boots.
A combination of paper hulls with steel bases would degrade pretty fast (the steel tends to degrade in my hunting vest overnight--before each bird season I have to go thru the survivors from last season and cull out the really rusty ones to recycle the components (the mutants) or shoot them up on the range (the merely crusty ones). The steel based shells are environmentally better in this respect; I have found brass shotshell bases in the dry West that had been manufactured in the late 19th century; heaven knows how long they had been sitting there.
