Great account of hunting in the kind of place I love ....... the swamps of the low country, SC and GA. I copied this old post of mine and pasted it here rather than try to explain how to prevent the empties from falling to the ground/water.
"I have mentioned many times, when I have read posters exclaim that they hate ejectors because they hate littering the field and woods, or they detest searching the ground for ejected hulls, that neither of those options is necessary. All one has to do is trap the hulls with the palm of the hand, and do with them as you please.
Some of my friends and I shot a round of sporting this afternoon, then went back to a couple of the stations to work on a few presentations that we weren't happy with. After that, I asked a friend to video me shooting a few crossers to show how I trap the hulls ejected from my MX 8. I apologize in advance for the rotation of the camera in "mid-stream". He didn't realize that it would rotate the scene 90 degrees, but maybe you can see what I wanted to show.
In practice, I catch the rear end of the top lever with the meaty part of the base of my thumb, actually part of my palm, and use it to rotate the lever to the right, which puts my fingers in perfect position to trap the hulls in my hand and toss them in the trash can, to my left on this station.
It may look a bit contrived on this video, but it's because I was aware of the video in progress which made me think about what I was doing more than normal. I have been doing this for so much of my life it has become second nature, and requires no thought at all. I can do this on every ejector gun I own, from 12 through .410, S x S or O/U."
https://youtu.be/AI5oLrrzy2USRH