We study the production ofΛ hyperons inp + A reactions within the BUU transport approach including elasticΛ N rescattering and extract theΛ sticking probabilities and hypernucleus formation cross sections as a function of bombarding energy and target mass. At 1.5 GeV about 25% of theΛ hyperons are found to be bound in case of heavy nuclei like238U leading to large cross sections forΛ-hypernuclei. The respective hypernuclei show broad distributions in excitation energy, momentum and angular momentum. The decay of theΛ hyperon in case of heavy targets is found to be almost entirely due to nonmesonic decay channels, i.e.ΛN → NN processes.