Backyard ranges

[cynthialee]

If I remember right Uncle Sam told me to stick to 3 round bursts and rock and roll was only for suppressing fire or a pitiful last ditch effort.

 

[eggwelder]

mine is an existing pile of dirt that a previous owner piled up. i made a log wall, filled with sand behind and it is about 5 feet high. i extended the sides with sandbags . i have a sand bullet trap for recovering lead in front of the log wall and i staple my targets to the front of the trap. i`ll be extending it and giving it another foot or two of height with sand filled tires in the future, and plan on covering that whole thing with dirt and planting grass. it is behind my house and only gets used when i am present. behind the backstop is about a mile of nothing and then an army base training area.
only disciplined shooters are invited to shoot with me, and i have marked 5,10, 15, 20, 25, 50 and 100 yd firing points. it is one lane right now, but hopefully two by next fall

 

[nkbj]

Sure miss the one I had in Texas.
Rolled the bench out onto the apron and had at it.

 

[nkbj]

Hot Wells, a Cypress, Texas firing range; had been in operation for decades. Then a spent bullet hit a construction worker way down range: The worker was not injured.

Results: An injunction and closure of the range.

i learned my lesson after building a very nice firing range on property east of I-35. Some cretin using the range killed a cow on the adjacent property. i took the dozer and destroyed the range. You should have heard the whining. Persons not related to me by blood will not use my firing range.

Bullets don't always follow a straight path. The surface danger area is cone shaped to accommodate ricochets, etc. See Figure 3-2.

untitled (army.mil)

If you don't own the property to the maximum range of the weapon being fired, you must be careful to the extreme. The maximum range of the US Army 9mm ball round is 1,800 meters. See table 4-4, page 35, Distance X.

This is my little range. There are target butts at 50, 75, 125 and 225 yards. The close in berm serves the 50 and 75 yard targets.View attachment 109193

In the 70's there was a bozo at Hot Wells that bounced a slug and it landed at a golfer's feet. That one sure raised a ruckus.

 

[Boston Bill]

NRA helped our club for over 50 years with design, etc. With over 900 members, eventually subdivisions encroached all around and some bullets ended up hitting houses far beyond eyesight. Thankfully, no person was injured. Bullets go a long way and do what seems to some, impossible things. I suggest starting with a really good aerial view at least a mile from the firing line. Then make plans.

My club got surrounded also. We made the pistol and rifle ranges no blue sky ranges.

 

[Treestalker]

Yup . . .
Then there are the Arabs . . . .and their RECKLESS celebratory firing of their firearms into the air!!

Where the hell do they think their bullets are landing??

On the heathen infidels, of course, Insha Allah! LOL!

 

[Treestalker]

In the 70's there was a bozo at Hot Wells that bounced a slug and it landed at a golfer's feet. That one sure raised a ruckus.

In the 2010's at the golf course at Huntsville, Arkansas, a golfer slugged a golfball at terminal velocity about 3 inches in front of my concrete truck windshield after a delivery. Glad I wasn't going any faster! Ban golf balls?...

 

[Capnball]

Bullets leave properly designed firing ranges for two reasons:

1. Shooters firing over the berms.

2. Shooters firing out of range safety limits.

3. Ricochets, especially ricochets off the ground short of the berm.

The real sure nuff prosecution of a man whose bullets left a club shooting range:


"A bullet from the Stockertown Rod & Gun Club firing range pierced a Stockertown home and was found on the floor of a guest room, according to Northampton County's district attorney.


The same day, another bullet from the club struck a garbage can in the rear of a Stockertown home in the vicinity of a mother and her young son, the district attorney said.


Charges were filed Monday against the man responsible for the errant bullets:.

Charges filed after bullets from Stockertown gun club struck homes - lehighvalleylive.com


This guy went to prison after his bullet killed his neighbor:


"Gray did it is up to land owners to make sure bullets stay on their property. He noted the 2008 case of Joseph McCarthy, the Essex, Vt., man convicted in the death of his neighbor.

A stray bullet from McCarthy’s property killed John Reiss, who was sitting down to dinner. McCarthy was sentenced to two years in prison."

ttps://www.mynbc5.com/article/highgate-to-take-on-backyard-ranges/3307667#

DNR temporarily closed this range after bullets hit a home:

Michigan shooting range temporarily closes after bullets hit neighboring home (yahoo.com)

This is at my local range. You can see the overhead baffles designed to keep shots from going over the berm but I'm always amazed to see dozens (if not, hundreds) of shots in the top of the baffles. I get upset if I'm near the edge of the paper. There's some terrible shots out there. I mean, terrible.

 

[Capnball]

Hopefully back down on them

Saw that on the news once. Several dumb ass revelers we're struck by falling party bullets. Too funny.

 

[Capnball]

How did you make the top piece ?

2000 years from now, some archeologist is going to dig up that bench and swear it's where ancient Americans made blood offerings to Larry Potterfield, The god of shooting!

 

[Canute Rex]

If you want to recover your lead, there's nothing better than a big plywood box of rubber playground mulch. It's just shredded tires, sometimes dyed a color. You can get it by the bag from garden stores and Home Despot.

I have a box backstop with a hinged lid. The rubber mulch will stop a 54 caliber round ball in about 10". When I want to do some casting I just open the top and dig for treasure. Most of the round balls end up in the same area of the mulch.

The front of the box has a panel of 1/4" plywood that slides into tracks so I can replace it. I weighed some balls before and after and found that they only lose about 1% of weight from the experience.

Eventually the mulch will settle and you have to stir it up and add a little more.

 

[Capnball]

If you want to recover your lead, there's nothing better than a big plywood box of rubber playground mulch. It's just shredded tires, sometimes dyed a color. You can get it by the bag from garden stores and Home Despot.

I have a box backstop with a hinged lid. The rubber mulch will stop a 54 caliber round ball in about 10". When I want to do some casting I just open the top and dig for treasure. Most of the round balls end up in the same area of the mulch.

The front of the box has a panel of 1/4" plywood that slides into tracks so I can replace it. I weighed some balls before and after and found that they only lose about 1% of weight from the experience.

Eventually the mulch will settle and you have to stir it up and add a little more.

Great idea

 

[cynthialee]

that is a sight better than digging lead out of the side of the hill

 

[Ninering62]

most, if not all, places make it illegal for bullets to leave your property, so as you have already noted, proper backstops are an absolute necessity... also consider the beaten zone beyond

The fam I'm stayin with has 20 acres in the country. I have set up a 400yd range on it. I had, until this yr just shot at the right angle from my bench to use the row of pine trees as a wall to stop bullets. No need to worry about any the trees didnt stop bc nuthin but a super thick ( unwalkable by man ) patch of trees with swampy ground so no danger to anyone. But this past yr the guy that owned the 80 acres to the north & west of the property divided that place up & built a dang house almost directly downrange. So the earth mound bullet stop behind my 400yd target & lining up the rest of my targets with it was a must.

 

[Crow-Feather]

I am on one side of a hill shooting 100 yards into the side of the next hill.

 

[DuncNZ]

Never underestimate people's ability to do stupid stuff. My home club has very large "baffles" set down range at about the 20 yard mark (see picture). They serve as both protection from errant rounds going over the down range berms and have a coating on them to dampen sound (we're surrounded by suburbs now and keeping sound levels down is a condition of the permit). If you look closely at the picture you can see repaired patches on this sound attenuation material. Some of the repairs are within a foot or two of the top. We have strict range rules against high muzzles, new member introduction classes to explain and emphasize the rules, roaming RO's to enforce the rules and video surveillance on the line and people still let rounds go at 30+ degrees above horizontal. We keep culling the dimwits out of the membership rolls but new ones take their place. We'd have been shut down years ago if it weren't for those baffles but we have to have them because you can't fix stupid.View attachment 109791

That is a great idea , and is used in many European ranges on town or road edges . Another thing you can do is put a rail across at about 7 feet or lower , this stops muzzle lift in the first place , but stays open enough to let the smoke out .

 

[flashpoint]

I hunt this small farm and the owner in his 80s usually goes to another state to hunt over the holidays. HIs sister comes over and takes care of the place while he's gone. She is the opposite of her warm and friendly brother. When she sees me she gives me an up and down stare with a bit of a frown like she has never seen me before and I have to tell her all over again who I am, that I have her brother's permission, and why I am there which is usually to hunt or to sight on my ML, etc. She is in her 80s and quite spry and very adept at doing chores and taking care of a horse and some cats. She isn't very talkative and goes about her business where she continually picks up sticks, loads them in a little cart behind a mower, and trucks the load down to the woods which are at the end of one of their pastures which about 500 yards from the farmhouse. If you could see what she has piled there over the years, it would put a hundred beaver dams to shame. She is very small and quiet and all of a sudden, she appears behind me and acts like she doesn't even know I am there and ignores me. Sometimes she asks how long I will be there because it scares the horse. OK. So one day I was going to sight in and carried my gun and kit and chair and targets, ramrods, power; pretty much everything you would need to sight in properly. I am trying to do this being as inconspicuous as possible. So I take it all the very end of the pasture by the woods and set up my chair, targets, lay out my RBs, patches, powder, caps; you name it, it's there. So I load up and start to shoot. After the third round I have reloaded and cocked the gun and pulled the set trigger and was just about to touch off a shot when there she is on her little cart behind me with her load of sticks. I didn't hear her as I had plugs in my ears. She pulls around me, ignores me and proceeds to take a straight path from the muzzle of my gun to my target and then takes her sweet time unloading her sticks WHAT THE...??? Another time, I saw her truck but she was not around. Because it is such a long trek with all my stuff to get to where I wanted to shoot, I drove along a car width dirt path that went around the fields to where I was going to shoot. I decided to shoot down the path which ended at some large trees for a backstop with fields beyond. I set everything up (and you know how long THAT takes). I was going to walk down before shooting but, heck, it's a bright sunny day, there is no one around, there are wide open fields and I have a backstop. I get settled in, the gun is up and ready to go and I detect a slight movement on the other side of the trees. I wait, couldn't see anything, I wait again, nothing, all is clear; must have been a bird. I am ready to fire and guess what? Her head pops up right in my line of fire. There is no mower, no cart, no sticks. WHAT THE...??? She comes up the path, glares at my car. make no eye contact and walks up to the house. OK, I finish as fast as I can, not sure if I am sighted in as accurately as I want, pack it all in and when I drive the path back to the barn, she had driven a waist high iron stake into the center of the path with a red rag wrapped around it. WHAT THE...??? Do ya think she is trying to tell me something? So that's MY back yard shooting range story. You can never be too careful, look behind your target, look again, and never underestimate an 85+ year-old women. I mean, if she is really trying to make me shoot her, why doesn't she just ask?

 

[Flintlock]

I hunt this small farm and the owner in his 80s usually goes to another state to hunt over the holidays. HIs sister comes over and takes care of the place while he's gone. She is the opposite of her warm and friendly brother. When she sees me she gives me an up and down stare with a bit of a frown like she has never seen me before and I have to tell her all over again who I am, that I have her brother's permission, and why I am there which is usually to hunt or to sight on my ML, etc. She is in her 80s and quite spry and very adept at doing chores and taking care of a horse and some cats. She isn't very talkative and goes about her business where she continually picks up sticks, loads them in a little cart behind a mower, and trucks the load down to the woods which are at the end of one of their pastures which about 500 yards from the farmhouse. If you could see what she has piled there over the years, it would put a hundred beaver dams to shame. She is very small and quiet and all of a sudden, she appears behind me and acts like she doesn't even know I am there and ignores me. Sometimes she asks how long I will be there because it scares the horse. OK. So one day I was going to sight in and carried my gun and kit and chair and targets, ramrods, power; pretty much everything you would need to sight in properly. I am trying to do this being as inconspicuous as possible. So I take it all the very end of the pasture by the woods and set up my chair, targets, lay out my RBs, patches, powder, caps; you name it, it's there. So I load up and start to shoot. After the third round I have reloaded and cocked the gun and pulled the set trigger and was just about to touch off a shot when there she is on her little cart behind me with her load of sticks. I didn't hear her as I had plugs in my ears. She pulls around me, ignores me and proceeds to take a straight path from the muzzle of my gun to my target and then takes her sweet time unloading her sticks WHAT THE...??? Another time, I saw her truck but she was not around. Because it is such a long trek with all my stuff to get to where I wanted to shoot, I drove along a car width dirt path that went around the fields to where I was going to shoot. I decided to shoot down the path which ended at some large trees for a backstop with fields beyond. I set everything up (and you know how long THAT takes). I was going to walk down before shooting but, heck, it's a bright sunny day, there is no one around, there are wide open fields and I have a backstop. I get settled in, the gun is up and ready to go and I detect a slight movement on the other side of the trees. I wait, couldn't see anything, I wait again, nothing, all is clear; must have been a bird. I am ready to fire and guess what? Her head pops up right in my line of fire. There is no mower, no cart, no sticks. WHAT THE...??? She comes up the path, glares at my car. make no eye contact and walks up to the house. OK, I finish as fast as I can, not sure if I am sighted in as accurately as I want, pack it all in and when I drive the path back to the barn, she had driven a waist high iron stake into the center of the path with a red rag wrapped around it. WHAT THE...??? Do ya think she is trying to tell me something? So that's MY back yard shooting range story. You can never be too careful, look behind your target, look again, and never underestimate an 85+ year-old women. I mean, if she is really trying to make me shoot her, why doesn't she just ask?

Some people are just full of self hatered their goal in life is to make others unhappy as well.

 

[sidtrog]

Shooting in the air is not a good option. Some years ago was working in a small town ER on New Years Eve, 12:05 am a line of cars and pick ups came screaming into the parking lot and the multiple family members of a teenage boy dragged him through the door yelling "Juniors shot, he's dying!" Turned out the family tradition was for everyone to get their guns out at midnight , go out in the yard and blast in the new year with a shot in the air. Unfortunately Junior let his slip somehow, fell to the ground butt first and unload a 12 g birdshot load into his side. Bloody impressive wound up his right side, terrified boy and family, but fortunately only a couple pellets in the liver and lung, nothing life-threatening.
I think that changed the family tradition.

 

[MSW]

Nice bit of design with that baffle thing ... gotta remember that one