Are firing range "hot spots" really dangerous ?

[shep854]

"Rocks in the berm can do the same thing. Around here where it's really wet during the winter the rocks tend to float to the surface or the soil erodes to expose them. So each spring part of our range cleanup is to pick out the bigger lemon and bigger size rocks and toss them out of the way. The odd thing is that there's no sign of actual soil erosion on the banks. No silt at the base or anything like that. But each spring there's a new crop of rocks."--BCRider

New England farmers call it 'growing rocks'. That's where the material for their stone fences came from.

 

[Murphy4570]

If its any thing like our range, the reloader's sieve the berm for lead on regular basis.

Holy crap, that's a really good idea!

 

[shep854]

A local Birmingham, AL range, the FOP range in Pleasant Grove does the same. The owner sells the recovered metals to help cover range expenses.

http://www.foprangeinc.com/

 

[FIVETWOSEVEN]

That video with the .50 caliber ricochet was shot at 100 yards, not 1,000 yards.

 

[Dnaltrop]

Have a very recent, dime sized burn scar on my lower left neck from frag at 50 feet off of the steel wall at the end of the range.

Came from the guy shooting .40 3 lanes to my left, the jacket flew and hit my neck flat, and seared itself to my skin. Hit moderately hard, felt like someone hit me with a snapped rubber band till the burning started. And THAT is why we wear goggles kiddos.

I've also shot myself in the leg with a wax round. (http://www.gunfighter.com/waxbullets/ great for draw-and-fire practice, keep your toes intact )

The phone-book I was using to stop the rounds bent, and the round curved inside like it was through a pipe, and nailed me in the lower leg.

Curved surfaces are bad, m'kay?

 

[SabbathWolf]

That video with the .50 caliber ricochet was shot at 100 yards, not 1,000 yards.

I "thought" 1000 yards didn't sound right to me either.
That's just what the description said.
I believe you are right.
That was crazy anyways though......lol

 

[Fishslayer]

That's what I was going to say...scavengers.

They prefer "miners" or "harvesters."

Look on castboolits.com & you will find several who sell range lead ingots. Good, sound recycling. How much more green can ya get?

 

[sonick808]

just push some new dirt on the front of the berm and "rotate" it every month or so. Use, Borrow or rent a bobcat and have some fun

 

[JohnKSa]

In it they talk about how the old practice of shooting into sand or the side of a hill is not good due to bullets piling up in one spot and causing a ricochet hazard.

Lead is pretty unlikely to cause ricochets. It's far more likely to soak up bullets than to throw them back.

 

[brickeyee]

The range I use has a front end loader that is used to periodically replace the front of the berm.

The soil removed is sieved for bullets.

 

[Straight Shooter 47]

About 30 or so years ago, I was shooting an old dishwasher at about 20 yards with my Colt Series 70 1911. Hardball ammo.
Had a round bounce back and hit me in the leg and it hurt like hell. Lesson learned, be careful what your shooting. Lead ammo will send splatter, but for close up steel shooting is the only way to go. Id NEVER use hardball for that.
As for a berm having so many rounds in it that its causing ricochets... Id have to see it to believe it.

 

[SabbathWolf]

About 30 or so years ago, I was shooting an old dishwasher at about 20 yards with my Colt Series 70 1911. Hardball ammo.
Had a round bounce back and hit me in the leg and it hurt like hell. Lesson learned, be careful what your shooting. Lead ammo will send splatter, but for close up steel shooting is the only way to go. Id NEVER use hardball for that.
As for a berm having so many rounds in it that its causing ricochets... Id have to see it to believe it.

Don't tell that story to a Democrat!
They'll be wanting to ban dish washers next too.

 

[gspn]

Everyone always says to wear eye protection...but nobody every mentions wearing a cup. I got hit in the thigh by a ricochet at the range one day...slapped me pretty hard and felt like a wasp sting. A hit to the eye would have been life altering...but a hit to the nuts...would have killed me.

 

[bbuddtec]

...what JohnK said...

never mind the word ricochet conjures up images of a lethal bullet hurtling back at us innocents... :| ...anti

 

[mickeyblueyes]

I can tell you all one thing,when my friend and I were in our 20s (that was 30 years ago) we were shooting just like you guys are now, He had a Ruger mini 14 223 and was shooting at some steel. sure enough a piece came flying back and lodged in my knee.
I had a surgeon take it out. My lesson was learned. Guys at the very least wear eye protection, and if you want kids a cup.

 

[CountryUgly]

EVERY single time a subject like this (ricochet while out target shooting) comes up, I always remember this video.
This guy is "lucky" to be alive!
I can't believe he's not actually hurt.

"The target, a steel plate, was 1000 yards away. You
can hear the ping of the hit, and then the bullet comes
back and hits his earmuffs on his head. The footage is amazing."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZDT_2i2_VQ

That was crazy ^^....Guess that's why they banned guns in the Down Under those boomerrang bullets are brutal....

 

[bomberbill357]

We had to close our range and construct a steel wall b/c of the number of spent rounds in the berm. Almost every round was kicking things out of the berm back at us. Pieces of rounds are one thing but it was getting to the point that whole bullets were kicking back at dangerous velocities. We did some research and found that there were close to 10 million rounds in that berm that we could count.
I should caution everyone that this is an extreme example and that a lot of those rounds were fired in the time frame of about a 2 year period, with very little rain and the berms were not collapsing on themselves so there were many exposed rounds.

 

[shep854]

The cost of the recovered metal should have covered the expense of the work, though!

 

[brickeyee]

We had to close our range and construct a steel wall b/c of the number of spent rounds in the berm.

Do you all like doing things the hard way?

You dig out about 8 feet of the berm, replace with new soil, and start to work filing the new stuff with lead.

You can sift the soil for bullets and sell them to casters, and save the soil for the next go round (instead of trying to pay hazmat charges to dispose of it).

 

[Rapidrob]

In the 50 years I've been shooting, I have never seen a bullet come back from a dirt berm. If they did continue to move they went over the berm.
The only bullet I have ever seen come back was at a match where the steel target were set on top of an upside/down rail road rail. A shooter was shooting a 98K Mauser in 8MM
and was using Turk ammo. The bullet struck the rail road rail at the bottom and came straight back at him from 200 meters away. The bullet passed between the two of us very fast and made a loud screaming sound. I halted the match and all of the competitors shifted to the right of the rail by 10 degrees. We had no more rounds coming back at us.

 

[Greg528iT]

At my outdoor pistol range, we have steel traps at 12 yards and 25 yards. You can tell which lane most people use when shooting. The lead hits the 45 degree steel plate and slides down the plate to where it meets the gravel/ sand base. Over time the lead and jackets form a pretty solid mass of lead. I've had several large chunks of lead fly back out of the trap and land 8-9 yards from the trap. Weird to see, scary only a little bit. I had to use a large pick to pry the mass of lead from the crevice of the steel and earth. I then shoveled and raked the sand /gravel into a nice pocket at the back. I've not seen bounce back since that time. I'll probably be keeping my eye on it, for the safety of our members.

 

[Greg528iT]

As you can see, all the lead welds itself into a pretty solid mass. This is only a portion of the massive clump, after I used the pick to loosen it from the steel plate and ground. It was wedged in there very tightly.

 

[Destructo6]

Been hit twice myself by stuff coming back from the dirt/lead berm. The first was .223 in the shoulder (hurt and left a welt) and the second was in the forehead, which didn't hurt much.

Weird, because I'd been on that range 5 days a week for a year or more, then twice in two days.