am concidering building a personal shooting range at my place.
was curious to see if any of you all had one at your property and what it looks like.
just trying to get some ideas for mine for targets and so on. Berms and sizes
am concidering building a personal shooting range at my place.
was curious to see if any of you all had one at your property and what it looks like.
just trying to get some ideas for mine for targets and so on. Berms and sizes
We need more information.
What do you want to do? Are you shooting rifles from a bench, handguns and carbines in an action bay, trap and skeet, etc? That will dictate what kind of range fan (the safety area around and behind the range) you need. That's your main limiting factor.
Let us know.
Okie John
“The reliability of the 30-06 on most of the world’s non-dangerous game is so well established as to be beyond intelligent dispute.” Finn Aagaard
"Don't fuck with it" seems to prevent the vast majority of reported issues." BehindBlueI's
I can shoot on my place, but there are some neighbors somewhat close, so I dont shoot too much so as not to annoy them.
Ive had ideas of making a good berm and a shoot shed with sound baffles incorporated to absorb much of the noise. Have seen designs and reports of various way to do it. One guy made one that he was able to shoot a 375 H&H rifle and his wife in the house didnt know he was shooting.
A lot of considerations go into building a personal range.
You should consider:
1) Primary use of the range for handguns, rifles, shotguns.
2) Sport training (i.e., are you using your range for training for USPSA/3-Gun/Trap/Precision Rifle/Steel Challenge) or general use?
3) Terrain in your area
4) Water, water table depth, and run-off
5) Soil type in your area
6) Maximum distance
7) Maximum caliber
8) Additional local limits (is there minimum acreage, minimum distance from roads/buildings, etc. stipulated by the state and/or county)
9) Insurance (particularly if anyone besides you shoots on your range).
The EPA has an excellent primer for considering range construction allowing you to address 2, 3, 4, and 5 - https://www.epa.gov/sites/production...ts/epa_bmp.pdf
A personal range is great, but requires a bit more planning than might be initially thought. One thing to bear in mind is that building a berm alters the landscape significantly and effects runoff and water significantly. I've seen more than a few poorly built ranges that flood every time it rained more than an inch. If your land is dual use (agriculture, for instance), you want to not screw these things up, or it will cost you in the literal sense. A personal range that allows lead to leach into the water table could have substantial environmental fines associated with it, not too mention you don't want that shit in your drinking water.
While not "cheap", depending on your volume of fire, SACON blocks may be the most cost-effective way to build a range without significant alterations to your landscape. https://www.terrancorp.com/content/s...ire-structures - I calculated the cost once, basically you'd want blocks, two high - 4-6 across to build 2-3 shooting lanes, it would run ~$6,000, but besides renting a forklift to drop the blocks into place, you're basically all done for ~60-70k rounds of shooting. If you're a high volume shooter, it isn't cost effective, in these sense. But if you're a 5-10k a year kind of guy, then you've solved your range situation for a considerable amount of time. Not having to deal with water run-off challenges, berm maintenance, berm construction, backfill/landfill, and lead recovery - you'll come out close in terms of time + money.
Mine is a U shaped berm 15 yards wide inside the berm and 25 yards deep. Going back from that I have a 45 ft wide cleared shooting lane back to 500 Yards.
Conduct a good map recon. Google your property, it will be a couple years old possibly, but the image can show adjacent property that might be in ricochet range.
Have fun with it, I did.
Google Earth Pro was free for a while. That plus search your local county name + GIS and you might get very recent satellite maps.Originally Posted by Arbninftry
I am thinking about getting some old tires and filling them up with rocks. Then covering the whole mess with dirt.
As far as targets, find steel (round, IDPA etc) on Amazon or Ebay. There is a guy on Ebay who sells T-Post hangars for ~$20. I am about $100 into 3 steel targets, hangars, and $6 t-posts.
...and of course you need suppressors to be a courteous neighbor.
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