Was a story in one of the outdoor magazines years ago about a group of old duck hunting buddies. When the first one passed they loaded his ashes in some shot shell and would fire there first shot of the season with his ashes. Always thought it was kind of a neat idea could even add some colored chalk if wanted. When my older brother passed two years ago, we dumped a good deal of his ashes at his deer stand. Was what he wanted so we did it.

Mac

Send the whole urn of ashes up with a drone and get all his buddies to open up on it at the same time.

got John Prine's "please don't bury me" going in my head. lol

Monster Toms, that was one piece of the puzzle that I was looking for. Thank you. I didn't even find that kind of specific information on the shotgun forums. That saves me a bunch of experimentation.

Thanks, Mac. If this is going to ceremonial colored chalk would really add a whole new dimension. Thank you.

Imagine a 21 gun salute with red, white and blue bursts! I love it.

This cremation thing is fairly new to me. I needed to do a little research to find what I might be getting into.

It seems the cremains, or ashes fresh out of the furnace, contain large bone segments. These usually get ground up, but, not always. I suspect that I will not have to deal with that. Maybe a little sifting but not necessarily any gluing.

Are you looking to shoot lead topped with ashes?

I've been using a super light load using about 70 grains of white rice in place of shot and it's loaded in a steel rated wad. I use these for wing shooting wasps attacking the honey bee hives. I'd bet it would work with straight ashes. Alliant Extra lite.

Enable sarcasm, that might be all you can send.

I skimmed through the other post. Depending on what you would like to do, light load with some ashes, all ashes, heavy load for hunting. Could go from all ashes to some ashes. I would go with a light load with some ashes. Send him up!

For me, when I am dead, well, that is it. It is all over for me. There should be enough $ set to the side to get all my friends drunk. That is my goal any way.

Jerry Jr.

Wildflights, I like love that load. While it seems simple enough to adapt to this application; I intend to try it for it original intent. I'll bet a couple pesky squirrels might start a rice diet, too.

Jerry Jr., that is probably what I'll end up doing. A light load with some ashes. Monster Toms' idea of using a deeper shot cup with a lighter published load makes that even easier. While I wasn't planning on using a wad with integral shot cup, it should also eliminate the "dust in the face" scenario.

Or maybe loading them into some clay pigeons

That's what I've swore my kids to do with my ashes. I told them they better do it or I'll haunt them.

It's an Alliantpowder.com recipe - 3/4 oz, Federal Gold Medal, Extra Lite powder and FED209A. I swap the hull for a Federal paperbase and I swap the wad for either a PT1253 (holds 70 gr rice) or an MG42 (holds 85 gr rice). The PT1253 seems to work better for bald faced hornets because the pedals don't fall away. I wouldn't want to get hit by them but I don't think they'd be very effective for squirrels with white rice. They will chip wood and dig up the yard at snake shooting range. I don't have my chrono notes available but the wad went over the screens at over 1800 fps.

I have no idea what a shotcup full of ashes would weigh but I would guess that it'd be similar.

Just for giggles I spent five minutes at my bench.

• A AA 12 ga shot cup is about 4cc (just under 1/4 cubic inch)
• 4 cc of hardwood ash at an unknown moisture content weighs 27 grains.
• I have an unidentified wad that holds about 60 grains, or about 8cc. It has no cushion section, so is probably about maximum for a 2 3/4" hull

A 1 oz claybuster wad will hold 110 grn +/- of processed cremains

That's a big difference between cremains and hardwood ash. I need to regroup my ideas.

x2

Here's a pic of the final product.

Some are to be shot at the father's trap club, and some kept as a memorial. I made them all the same to keep from over-complicating things:

• semi-transparent Cheddite hull
• ~19 gr Winchester Super Target (WST) powder
• gas seal wad (no shot cup)
• cork spacers
• 1 oz 7 1/2 lead shot
• 3 cc cremains
• nicely printed overshot card
• roll crimp

If its just spreading cremains over a trap range, I would simply put some vermiculite in a lawn spreader, add the cremains, and spread the contents over the trap range. It would probably only take 10 minutes.

I think you missed the point !

Never heard of that, but brings going out with a bang a new meaning.