Un-supervised areas in Texas?

M

Mr.Man

Inactive
Me and my friend wanted to know if there are places in Texas where you can go and just shoot at whatever you set up, for free (legally). As in a place in the country side with no supervision (no rules), where you can shoot any type of round at any target. Like somewhere in west Texas maybe (deserted desert). Or is there even a place like that, that you have to pay to use? If not I assume you just have to find a land owner and get his/her permission.

I found a thread about this, but its from 2008 so I wanted to make a more recent acquisition.
 
Having myself driven from San Antonio to El Paso on Interstate 10 for example, I'm going to say there is plenty of room to shoot anything, missiles, howitzers, etc. Although I'm fairly certain that someone owns all that land.
 
SVO said:
Here in Texas, we tend to call it private property where you can do whatever you want.
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I think Mr.Man gets that. I believe what he's asking is whether there's some of all that land where he could go shoot if he is NOT the owner. Private property being private property and all, I don't think you really mean to say that private property means complete strangers can come onto someone else's property and do whatever they want. In the context of the original question, though, that is what you said.
 
As a small Texas land owner, my answer is 'it depends'. If someone is just out plinking, it's not a big deal. If they ask, I'm going to say no as a legal CYA, per legal advice. (I probably won't care or do anything if I see them out there later and they're not being stupid, but like many, I'm much more liability averse today, and certainly don't want to end up in court agreeing that I let someone on my property where they shot my neighbor from my property).

If they're bringing friends, lots of noise, trash, etc, shooting at or scaring things people care about (the dog, animals, family members, buildings, vehicles, etc) the trespassers will likely be confronted by a well armed sheriff or land owner, or may find themselves outgunned in a crossfire, keeping their heads down until the calvary arrives. Most rural land owners know the local sheriff well and have -0- problem with putting a round through a trespassers' vehicle block just to make the sheriff's job of apprehension easier.

If you're in South Texas near the border, any unknown armed person is a possible drug smuggler, and may get very little quarter in a confrontation.

One of the reason so much of the land is posted (as in "Posted: No Trespassing Violators will be Prosecuted" signs) is legal liability: Most are tired of getting sued for idiots coming on their property, doing something stupid, getting hurt, then calling the lawyer before EMS. If you do something stupid, the land owner is likely going to also hold criminal armed trespass over your head. If you get hurt, the land owners will likely fare better in a civil trial than had it not been posted.

Hope that helps. Whatever you do, please be safe and respectful. Most of the landowners are pretty reasonable, and if you showed up on my land, I probably wouldn't really care.
 
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Not exactly sure about texas, but here in NH if you were to look on the state fish and game site there is a map of NH and it displays all the state owned property available for the public to hunt, shoot, hike, fish. The law is as long as your 50ft from a rd 300ft from a permanent dwelling you can shoot . I googled earthed a location and found an awesome pit that apparently a lot people shoot at because of all the shot up trash and ammo boxes. People are idiots and they need to realize that's why we cant shoot any where! I try to haul out at least a couple bags of trash whenever i go out there.

Hope my advice/rant helps
 
MikeGunz good for you! I wish more would clean up their mess. Even in CA we have BLM land that can be used for this kind of fun. Last time I went to one of these someone brought 6lbs of exploding target for just one shot! It was cool but just a few minutes later we saw the police... Just got to be smarter about what and where we do these things.
 
If you are on my (Texas) land and I didn't invite you....your going to jail. If you got a gun and are shooting.... well....
 
I was looking for something like MikeGunz was talking about. I would never go onto land to shoot if I thought that it was private property. And Jimbob86 is right, that was pretty much what I was wondering I just didn't know what it was called.
 
There is public land in Texas, the LBJ Grasslands is one spot but it is hard to find and poorly marked. In my youth we used to go out there to shoot and hunt but I'm sure these days it is probably crowded.
Most land here is private and you better have permission before crossing fences.
You might try contacting Texas Parks & Wildlife for maps & info.
 
Looks like BLM manages a whopping 11,000 acres near Amarillo. For comparison, BLM manages about 23 million acres in Utah (42% of the state).
 
I suggest being respectful to landowners and not shooting on property without permission. Here is a link that lists places to shoot.

http://www.wheretoshoot.org/Find_Range/index.asp

The actions of every gun owner, hunter, shooter can help or hurt the public image of the group as a whole. It appears from your post that you don't want to follow any type of range rules. Why are you looking for a place with no rules or restrictions?
 
Quote Discern - "I suggest being respectful to landowners and not shooting on property without permission. Here is a link that lists places to shoot.

http://www.wheretoshoot.org/Find_Range/index.asp

The actions of every gun owner, hunter, shooter can help or hurt the public image of the group as a whole. It appears from your post that you don't want to follow any type of range rules. Why are you looking for a place with no rules or restrictions?"

I'm nothing, but respectful and law abiding. I just want to go out and not be restricted by rules on types of ammo, target, or how many shots you can fire within a span of time etc. Plus being in a place that isn't crowded with other people would be nice. I would pick up everything that I used/brought and take it back with me once I was done (including spent casing). I wouldn't fire upon protected wildlife or destroy the habitat.

I'm just looking for a place where I can be out in the open and free.
 
It was a long time ago (1968 approximately) that I lived in El Paso. A friend and I used to drive just north of the city on Hwy 54 and once we were out of sight of the city would just pull off the road and set up targets. There was bascially nothing out there as far as the eye could see, other than telephone poles heading north into New Mexico. At the time we never even wondered who owned the land and never had anyone stop and even ask us about what we were doing. I also made the drive several times to San Antonio and other than Ft. Stockton, there was practically nothing in the almost 600 miles between these two cities. If the land is unfenced, nothing seems to be on the land you can see, and that includes cattle or other livestock, I wouldn't be too worried about shooting.
 
Is there BLM land in TX?
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Looks like BLM manages a whopping 11,000 acres near Amarillo. For comparison, BLM manages about 23 million acres in Utah (42% of the state).
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OK, here's the skinny on public land in TX, otherwise known as a brief history of land title in our illustrious state. :D

In most Western states, the legal title to most (if not all) land was originally held by the federal government of the United States after being obtained (or stolen, but I digress...) from Native American tribes. In Eastern, Midwestern, and Southern states, title to land that was not privately held was transferred to the United States when the land was obtained from a foreign power or from Great Britain.

Texas is different from most states. The title to all land in TX was originally held by Spain and transferred to Mexico after it gained its independence. The Mexican government was severely strapped for cash and sold huge swaths of TX land to private owners to raise funds, a process that was greatly accelerated by rampant speculation; this practice continued after the Republic of Texas was established, as the new government had many of the same problems that the Mexicans did, i.e. a huge territory to protect, very little population, and a lack of readily exploitable natural resources in the better-populated and more-accessible coastal areas.

Here's the key to all of this: when the Republic of Texas finally agreed to join the USA, the remaining public Republic of Texas land went to the state government rather than the US federal government. Although statehood fixed some of TX's problems, the new state still had a very limited tax base; agriculture was not firmly established, commerce was constrained by a lack of reliable transportation, and the booming petrochemical industry didn't exist yet. Hence, the state resumed selling land, and sold almost all of it by the close of the 19th century. All that remains today are some small, odd-shaped, and/or inaccessible tracts, along with tracts "discovered" (so to speak) when someone resolves a long-ago surveying mistake.

Result? Almost all of the land in TX was already privately held before the modern federal BLM and national park systems were even established.
 
Result? Almost all of the land in TX was already privately held before the modern federal BLM and national park systems were even established.
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Damn, well thanks for the info. I already knew most of the general facts about Texas' past history, but I wasn't really putting it into the equation (so to speak). Maybe I'll just have to take a road trip on over to the western states where they have a ridiculous amount of public land :D Otherwise it looks like I need to start looking for property owners.
 
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I have never set foot in the great state of Texas but I'd like to throw out a few points of relevant information on a similiar topic. You see, at one time I did the same thing: I would go out into the wilderness to shoot my rifles. Only I lived in West Virginia. Although the state has a backwoods image, it is in reality "heavily settled." But just the same, what with strip mines all over the western half of the state, it was not difficult to find a place where one could shoot anything you could afford. But that was 40 years ago. Things seem to have changed some time along the way.

The last time I took a sentimental journal through the coal fields and strip mines of my native lands a few years ago, I found that many of my former destinations to be fenced off. What gives? They certainly haven't been developed and covered in mini-mansions and condos, not even summer homes. The population has plummeted.

The truth, I suspect, has nothing to do with people shooting but more with the simple fact that some of the places are actually somewhat dangerous, with open mine shafts and abandoned (and rickety) buildings. I imagine that was enough to cause places to be fenced and posted. After all, all those strip mines are private property, even if most of the property has literally been trucked away.

Also, many formerly wide open places along the rivers where people used to go camp, fish and boat (they never canoed) on a very informal basis is now state property with rules, fees and permits. I suppose it was state property in the past, too. I even know one place I used to go four-wheeling that had the road graded and then gated. Apparently that did it because vegetation grew up so well in the road that it became impassable to a four wheeled vehicle.

Why did I ever leave to begin with?
 
Ok mr.man I am just gonna throw this out there. There are some ranges that while they have rules, you can still have fun. What is your location?

The range I go to even if there are quite a few people it still never feels crowded. You can shoot up to 3 round burst. If you shoot jugs, fruit, or anything else that you set ontop of the lower berm guard you have to clean up the mess. There are a few other small safty oriented rules, thought they are easily followed, and common sense. They have steels on the hand gun range that are also fun to shoot.

There are quite a few ranges like this all over the state.
 
The answer to why so much land is fenced and restricted is simple and has already been touched on: liability of the landowner.

Much of the ranchland you see driving along the highways of Texas is used for cattle grazing and no one wants to see his livestock shot. That's another reason. I think if you really want to find a place to shoot, I'd suggest this. Locate a safe place to use, such as a dirt "borrow pit" or a good embankment, then take a trip to the local tax office and find out who owns that property, approach the landowner and respectfully ask permission to target shoot there. Be sure to let him know you are a safe gun owner, and that you will remove any trash from the site (not just yours but anything you find).

You might even offer a weekend of help mending fences or anything else he could use help with. In short, establish some kind of relationship with the landowner and you will be surprised what might happen. I had a deer lease years ago in west Texas and all of us on the lease helped the landowner with chores in the spring and fall before hunting season. In return we had year-round use of the land as opposed to two weeks before hunting season to a week after so we could remove our feeders and blinds as was usual.
 
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