Need advice for my shooting range

[Glaciers]

Ok, I'm wanting to finish out my 100 yard range. I'm going to put in some sort of back stop, just not sure what would be best. Things to consider are I'd like to be able to recover the lead and of coarse the safety issue. It' very slightly down hill, but I own the next quarter mile, and then it's government land for couple of miles no one goes out there. And there's about 2 million cords of vertical wood in the way. Ok I was thinking of a 3/8 steel plate 4 x 8 sheet on a 45 degree into the dirt. That's spendy. Then I was thinking about putting bails of straw 3 long by 4 high and 2 deep. First a sheet of plywood, then straw, another sheet of plywood, straw and a third sheet of plywood to see if bullets penetrated. A third layer of straw could be added. Not sure on how good straw would be for a bullet stop.
I'd love to make a berm of sand and soil but the ground is very soft until mid June and can't get equipment in without tearing everything up. I might add it is over my leach field. So whatever I do it would be nice to do it just as the last of the snow goes, about a week, and before the ground thaws. Road restrictions are on at 50% axle weight till about early June so getting sand delivered is out. So please put some suggestions forward if you would.
Thanks John

 

[Brad]

Do you have the equipment to build a good old pile of dirt? Sand is nice, it stops bullets fast and is easy to recover them from. Downside is it needs to be trucked in.
I did belong to a range that used an interesting design as a barrier wall at the edge of the range. They used 2 sheets of plywood roughly 6” apart and filled the void with dang and gravel. Downside as A backstop is that the plywood quickly gets shot up and falls apart.

What about using bales of straw stacked one deep backed by a structured berm? Stack old tires in a running bond with each layer filled with dirt before adding the next layer? The straw slows the bullets some and prevent bounce back from the tires.

 

[Winelover]

I have sand. Carefully thought out, before we built our home. Had the septic installer bring a truck load, at that time. Backed up, (behind it) is clay and large rocks. Sand is cheap and clean. Vegetation growth is minimal. Relatively, easy to sift. My range is sloped down hill, too. Nearest neighbor, in that direction, is high up on the ridge............@1/2 mile away.

Anyway to have it delivered and dumped in a accessible spot? You could move it with a wheel barrow, over time, if you don't have a tractor or ATV/UTV. Doesn't have to be done, all at once.

 

[Ole_270]

I built a roughly 4x4 box 5 ft tall by driving tee posts with 2x4s wired to them for corners. Walled the back with used bridge timbers, then closed in the other 3 sides with 2x6 and 2x10. Filled it with ag lime(ground limestone, easy to get here). I've had nothing penetrate more than halfway through, including TSX out of 300 mag and 338-06. The 2X10s on the front get shot up fairly fast, but staple a sheet of cardboard on it to attach targets to and it lasts a while longer.

 

[fiver]

sand would be the preferred recycling material.
you'd need a sand box of sorts to contain it and keep it in a pile though.
next would be dirt with no rocks.
you could do a 3 sided rail road tie box with 2 down across the front but the ties could get expensive too.
logs would work if you could shape and pin them.

believe it or not I get a lot of lead from behind the berm, the 50yd berm has a lot of handgun bullets right at it's base to about 30yds behind it.
the 100 yd berm is the same but not nearly as many, and since it mostly sees rifle bullets I don't get near as many from the front either.

this tells me if I had a home berm I'd want a top at the back of the berm to catch those.
just something simple about 16-24"s wide about 3' above the top of the pile.

 

[Cadillac Jeff]

When the tree trimming crews were trimming our power lines around here, I asked them if they needed a place to dump chips------ I showed them where to dump-----got at least a dozen loads. I built a simple target holder----2 poles set 3 ft. deep-----10 ft. apart----with 2 crossarms to tack cardboard on for targets.
I use a small tractor with loader to pile the chips up every couple years & replace the xarms every couple years to <<< but I am a retired lineman so I have a stock pile of old takeoff xarms-------
anyway wood chips are the deal here, they stop anything I shoot & I can mine for lead every couple years.

Jeff

 

[Glaciers]

Brad, can't get any equipment in until mid June because of soft ground and leach field, and the wife. Sand would be ideal. I'm thinking that 20 yards or two end dump loads would be a nice berm. The problem is road restrictions until mid June. I was thinking about stacked tires as they are free, filled with something, silt or sand. Never though about bounce back. Good though, need to keep that in mind. Problem in Alaska is the ground is frozen from first of October until first of June. We can plant in raised beds in mid May, but for anything 2 to 4 feet down it's June. Kinda puts a crimp on lots of projects. Makes the phrase "Making Hay" a standard for summer activities. We have 2 seasons in the interior of Alaska, "Winter and Fourth of July"
I could haul about 2 yards of martial on my heavy trailer at a time to the house, then shovel it into my 4 wheeler trailer and haul it to the range. Lots of shoveling, bad back, torn ligaments, getting old. I can and would do that, but, it might be mid June again.
JWG, I like that idea combined maybe with Fivers back stop to contain material. Friend half way to town has a old saw mill closed down and he's got no shortage of sawdust. I like how light it is.
Now that we are talking about options here, You guys just jogged my memory banks. Back in the Mid 70's I hauled about 50 45' cedar telephone poles to the homestead for projects. They were pressure treated for the first 8 feet then natural on up. We hauled another batch to a friends land and he built a natural log cabin with these cedar poles. Looks nice. Well I forgot there's still about 20 down in the meadow laying around. They are probably getting funky for structural uses but they are cedar. I pulled a couple out of the woods last summer and they were still usable. Built a 70 x 24 pole shop with them and a 32 foot tower. Those would work just fine to build a containment for sawdust or sand. I like it and the price is right.
Winelover nice range. If your bored come on up and built me a shooting bench will ya.
Fiver how does the lead get behind the berms? Are low shots skipping, or are they penetrating?
Thanks for the input.

 

[Brad]

Even a shot on the berm can bounce over the berm. I see it all the time.
A sheer wall berm reduces it but erosion keeps changing the berm face to a shallower angle.

 

[Glaciers]

Yeah Brad, I was going to not think about that just yet, but good point. After I get a berm, I'll think about a timber cap of some kind.
It's not like the old days when I first got here, you could clear trees with big caliber rifles.

 

[4060MAY]

wasn't there pictures of a backstop on this site, where they used a Truck tire with a steel plate that deposited the lead in the tire? thought I saved it....but
too old to figure out what to search for
Chuck

 

[4060MAY]

found it

FINALLY a bullet recyling trap that WORKS!!!

I've run the gamut of bullet traps from sandboxes to crumb rubber in boxes, barrels, buckets, steel contraptions, you name it. They all had major disadvantages, either being ridonculously expensive and/or heavy, or just flat too maintenance-intensive. Solved it. Guy on utoob had the basic...

www.artfulbullet.com

 

[Ian]

A lot of it depends on what kind of shooting you do. You need a "gross" backstop to catch strays and smaller, self-contained traps like the one I built above for efficient lead collection. If you do a lot of offhand shooting at steel targets, sand is the best choice for recovering your lead short of $5,000 worth of armor plate made into a giant funnel.

What I'd do first is what's been discussed: Build yourself a large crib (like 12' wide or more depending on your material availability, and at least 8' tall), make it three sided and put a log roof extending at least halfway to the front. I say halfway so you get sunlight on your targets. Build the crib butt-and-pass log cabin style and drill/spike with reinforcing bar. Support the sides at the open front by building log wings outward, and slope them by using shorter and shorter logs toward the top.

Fill your crib with sand or screened dirt. Sawdust makes a rotten, moldy, stinky mess when wet and big piles of it can compost and self-ignite into one hell of a fire. It also takes a lot of sawdust to stop bullets, like 6-8 feet or more depending on bullet shape and velocity. Shredded cedar is abundant here and makes a superb, safe, long-lasting, cheap berm material that stops bullets in just a foot or two without ricochets but it is dang near impossible to dig bullets out of it, or dig it, period. If you catch most of your bullets in traps and just need good berm material for safety, shredded brush is a good choice. The cedar doesn't decompose very rapidly and isn't a compost-fire risk in berm-sized piles, but I don't know what sorts of materials you have. Yellow pine mulch would probably work well but again, again, it is hard to dig.

If you put a steel roof with adequate overhangs over the crib so it stayed dry, sawmill dust would be pretty good if you could get a lot of it for free. You'd also want to put doors on the front to keep the snow and wind-driven rain out.

 

[Ian]

Oh, and forget mild steel for a deflector. It's ok for .22 rimfire but even revolver bullets will tear it up at a 45 degree angle.

 

[fiver]

crumb rubber works pretty good if you have a source.
I still haven't figured out the physics of the flippers.
the majority of them are usually on the left side of the berm [as faced] so the rotation, flipping of some sort, or burrowing and surfacing, any way something is something is going on.
I kind of think it's like a spinning top hitting an edge for a bit getting a little traction then changing direction.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

John G Another option. I use 50 gal poly drums layed on their side. Filled with sand. I have them set at 25 - 50 - 100 yards from my shooting stand. The biggest caliber i have is the 308 and 450BM. And i have yet to shoot completely through a drum.
If interested i can post a couple pictures.

 

[Rally]

In the winter you could just plow snow into a pile at the end of your range, then just pick up the bullets in the summer after the snow melts. In the summer the plastic barrels, like Kevin mentioned, would keep most of the water out of the sand. If you had barrels with the strap on lids, you could actually staple your targets to the lid and replace them when they get shot up.

 

[Winelover]

When I lived in Michigan, my friends acreage had a lot of sand. Would just dig it up and relocate it into a pile. Used an upright/standing wooden pallet as a backstop, as well as, to contain the sand. KIS.

 

[Glaciers]

Yeah Ian the steel idea always sounds good at first thought, then when it's though out, it's way to costly if done right. It exceeded my budget long before it would become functional.

Well good ideas all. A lot to think bout, balancing weather ground conditions for getting my skid steer in to move material in. Ian has a great idea, goes a fair amount further then I have energy to go unless I can get the skid steer in. So I'm thinking (that could be dangerous) that I will cut the telephone poles up into 8 (+ or -) foot pieces and load them on my 4 wheeler trailer couple at a time and haul them in the back way. I like Ian's idea for shape, with the wings and about 12 wide is the on bigger end. I had though from 8 feet in the back to 12 feet at mouth of the back stop. Then after the ground I could bring in sand and fill against the backing. Then just toss on a couple of poles on top with the loader. I do have silty soil available down the road, but sand, which will have to be delivered and can be delivered much closer to the site is the best option. Easiest to do and cheapest. Keep in mind I won't have any help, so I need to figure out the mechanics of moving and assembling without a youngster around. Slower but no wasted motion.

Rally I use snow a lot, it works good. Catches bullets with little or no damage. And like you said wait till spring and just pick the up bullets off the ground. All that is needed is patience.

Kevin good idea but I'm looking for something larger.

Thanks, this bunch is always helpful.

 

[fiver]

the thing is we ain't just looking to just build back stops...LOL
we all know your gonna recycle what goes into there, so no sense just dumping a pile of dirt full of rocks and having at it.

 

[Rally]

JohnG,
Yep on the snow thing and very little damage to the bullets, unless they hit each other.
I was going in to do a beaver contract a couple years ago, on a main forest route. It was about an hour ride from home and a big bottle of water consumed on the ride down. Stopped at an intersection of the forest route and hopped out of the truck. There on the ground, in about a 6 foot area, were over 100 bullets, some .38 lead SWC's and about half .22. So of course I picked them up! I figured someone had shot into a snow berm left from a snow plow the previous winter. That area had been logged the last couple years. I do the same in one corner of my driveway every winter.