back stop

C

c.j.sikes

New member
i am going to build a back stop for rifle and pistol shooting. the location is flat land, some small trees but nothing to stop bullets. i checked on hawling dirt in and it is about 300.00, ithought about cross ties but at 12 bucks each it seems to be to much. i am at a loss, anyone got any other ideas. thanks cjs
 
J C you don't have to haul dirt you have plenty of it all ready, rent a mini sholvel and start cutting out at about 50 yards and pile up the removed dirt at 100 yards, keep taking a layer off at a time and soon you will have a berm about 6 to 8 feet tall. You could make it 10 or 20 feet wide and rent it out as a shooting range. It will give you about a 10 to 15 degree incline down and a high berm, just make sure it is wide (thick) enough and goes back about 5 to 10 feet to stop any mag load that you may use. Also cut a drainage ditch so the water will drain off. Take some 2X4s and make yourself some target stands.

Jim
 
we just stacked up a bunch of old tires from the recycling center and filled them with sand from sandbags we got after the flood it cost us a total of like $50. We got one set up at 25 50 and 100 yards.
 
How much land do you have avalible? Rifle bullets WILL bounce off a earthen berm, and travel quite a ways. If there's no trees or terrian avalible, think long and hard about where a bullet may land. From running military night fire ranges, I'd guestimate that about 5%+ of M4 rounds fired at a 12' berm wind up flying outside the confines of the range and into the impact area ( which is well over 1k acres). While its a low amount or rounds escaping, and even lower odds of hitting people or damaging property, it is a risk that needs to be considered.
The range I'm working on (which I can't take credit for, as the designer is the facilities manager at CAG) is concave wall of tires, 70' from end to end, 18' high, and about 15' deep. The tires are stacked 3 abreast, and filled with sand clay as they're stacked. the inside of the wall will be backfilled, and there'll be an 8' plate steel "roof" to catch any flyers. The tires and clay are free, the roofing will cost a couple grand. Well worth it in my opinion.
 
I'd stay away from tires, First they cause some wierd recochets, and if you bury them, they will eventualy float to the top.

Our rifle range in town was closed down because the the recochets. The pistol range, that just had an earthern berm was allowed to stay open.

Dirts the best, better yet, dirt with grass planted on it to keep it from washing away.

I'm lucky, I have a mountain as a back stop for my range.
 
Tires usually have steel belts in them. My range used to have dirt-filled tires. They were replaced with earthen berms.
 
I guess I should have made it clear that we used smaller tractor tires. Our gun range used car tires and had to switch to tractor tires and now they put tires,railroad ties, and an earth berm but when you miss and hit the berm you almost always hear a nasty whine as the bullet ricochets. I havent heard that with the tires, I dont know if the tires slow the bullet down enough to make it not whine or what.
 
we have 1 a. wide and 5 deep but it has trees at back and is open pasture land for a mile , no stock on it. i saw at the police range a back stop made of plywood on 4 x 4 8x 8 feet with gravel in between 4 in. thick. use to stop 223 and pistol. they just replace plywood patches when it gets to leaking gravel. i dont know about other cal. the thing is they are back to a hill. behind it. i am short on hills at the moment. thanks cjs
 
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