I have no experience with the 32 special per se but I load gallery rounds for all my rifles under 35 cal. and have found that 2 1/2 to 3 grains of red dot work well in the 30 and 32 calibers. I have tried bullet weights from 75 to 100 grains and have found that the heavier bullets give the best accuracy. I shoot these all the time indoors and use a couple of old folded up blankets for a backstop. Shake the blanket out and you've got your lead. This load is good out to 25 yards with excellent accuracy and is a lot of fun for knocking starlings off of the bird feeder or smiting small rodents.

RJ-35-40 wrote on Mar 26^th, 2026 at 11:58am:


I work at the gun club every Tuesday in our indoor range. We have an angled trap to catch bullets, and some of the bullets end up falling down into a catch area at the base of the targets. I could shovel up a 5 gallon bucket full each week, IF I could carry the bucket! 
I did shovel up a bucket 3/4 full once and brought it home, but it was a PITA to process. Lots of brass jackets to skim off, and lots of smoke from dirt and burnt powder. I still have part of the bucket in my storage shed after I quit melting it.

And besides range lead being a pain to clean/remelt,
it is a Duke's variable mixture of hardball, soft jacket cores
and 22 bullets good only for "plinking"

I still have opportunity to collect some COWW in my "neighborhood". Lots of Iron and some Zinc ones to sort out, but the "Good" COWW is surprisingly reasonably consistent.
I do now have more than a lifetime supply, but my habit 
at the local auto shops is still addicting, "Just Because"
beltfed/arnie