I've shot away a lot of lead.  I always feel bad that I can't recover most of it and cast new bullets.  Years ago I built a heavy bullet trap.  The first experience wasn't good.  Bullets tended to shatter and come back and hit you. (Used mostly for handguns.)  I added some baffling and that stopped the splatter from coming back. But what I ended up with was dust and fragments.   

Probably the best backstop was just heavy timbers stacked aginst the dirt bank. If you keep shooting in one place long enough the wood will start to shatter and the bullets start to tumble out. We'd nail heavy 2" oak over the hole and keep shooting.  The bullets would collect behind the added board. 

I recently fired about 50 rounds of 45 Colt into a packed sawdust pile.  I expect to find them clustered about a foot deep.  I keep digging and didn't start finding them until about three feet into the bank. They were hard cast Keith style 250 grain at moderate velocity.  The lube was still in groove. They looked unfired except for rifle marks and sawdust stuck here and there.

How much effort do you go to to recover and recycle your lead? Do you have any good methods of stopping the bullets and recovering them?

This raises an interesting question...
Did the old-time shooters like Pope, Hudson et al ever state that they had to use certified lead and tin to be competative?

Bibby,

A long time back, I think there were some pictures posted of different bullet traps that were used by some shooters. You'ld probably have to get familiar with the search function to dig them back up.

John,

I use both, but have separate casting equipment so certified tin/lead isn't cross-contaminated with antimony or other trace metals contained in salvaged range alloys.

Thinking back on articles from The Rifle (later Shooting and Fishing) published by Arthur Gould, and various other books on the shelf, I don't recall anything specific about how the golden-age shooters sourced their lead and tin supplies or how they confirmed purity.
Curious.

factor in too that the "old time shooters" were almost entirely oriented toward offhand shooting. 
Anything comparable to our modern requirements for bench rest shooting was done on an experimental basis.   
The advanced experimenters were mostly pretty well-heeled individuals and could afford whatever they needed and was available.    {I personally exempt the "rowland group" from this generalization since we know so little about its details)

My experience is only two effective bullet traps.  Outdoors Dirt berm. Indoors Slanted Steel deflecting into dirt.   Anything hard and flat is going to eat up over time. Slanted takes the sting out of the hottest loads. Dirt absorbs the hot ones.

You can mine either method for lead, My club uses a contractor who mines for free, and keeps the lead.  Small scale nobody looking not much of an issue. Large scale all sorts of permits & cautions by the government. We are happy to get rid if it with no cost.

Most places in the world Lead is not the issue it has become in the US. I guess they watch the kids, make sure they don't chew the window sills. We regulate the paint instead.   No doubt in the old days you could buy very high quality lead, it was a common product used in many processes.

Boats

If I was going to recover my own lead. I would use a railroad tie frame boxed in 3 sides for a backstop Piled dirt around the outside. Dig out foot or so inside then add Sand that can be sifted. Heavy steel plate at 45 % angle behind the targets.

Plate deflects down into the sand that can be easily mined with screens. We had this arrangement at our Indoor range and it was easy to separate the lead.  Permits were a problem now we deflect into shredded old tires which are hauled away lead and all by a contractor.

Boats

I buy a landscaping product at Wal-Mart that is made of ground up auto tires. Fill a cardboard box with this stuff and it will stop most bullets. A 12 inch cube will stop 22 rim fire. Recovered bullets have little deformation.