Building a mini range

[Rickstir]

Mod, move this to where ever you think it should go.

I live on 80 acres far from the maddening crowd. Actually a little town of about 1400. I am having a shop built that will have a covered lean-to on the side that faces the majority of my property. I am going to build a mini-range for both handgun and rifle shooting. This will take this activity out of the our backyard and about 75 yards from the house. I am sure the dogs, cats, chickens and wife will appreciate that!

I had the bobcat man put a 7 foot high pile of dirt 7 yards from the lean-to for handgun practice and another 50 yards for sighting in deer rifles. There is nothing in the direction I shoot except woods for 3 miles.

Any ideas for amenities? Expecially looking for ideas on homemade target holders.

 

[halvey]

Use 4x4's and 2x4's to frame up and use chicken wire with clothespins to hold the paper targets.

 

[halvey]

dupe

 

[TallPine]

50 yards for sighting in deer rifles

Isn't that a little short ....?

The rule of thumb for scoped rifles seems to be 25 yards to get it on the paper (first zero) and 100 or 200 yards to verify (second zero).

I guess for an open sight 30-30 you might be all right sighting at only 50 yards ...

The 50 yard range sounds ideal for 22 LR

 

[aguyindallas]

Uhh, you know how to make a grown man cry. This is my dream! I want my own range!

 

[NHBB]

what are the concerns associated with the accumulation of lead on your property over time? I too would like to have my own personal range one day.

 

[Rickstir]

I have always used 50 yards for my deer rifles. 30.06 if I am 1 inch or so high at 50 I am good to go. Longest shot I will take on my farm is 125 yards. After that you can't see the critters. Most shots, from my deer best deer stand with a rest, are 50 to 75 yards.

I am not concerned about the lead. It will just be me and maybe my brother shooting. Most everything will be confined to the mounds. We are on county water for the house, deep well for the gardens and livestock. I don't anticpate a problem in this area. The county doesn't bother with small folks like me. Heck, the only permit I had to get when I built our home was for the sewage lagoon.

 

[Kodiak AK]

Won't the lead seep into your ground water and poisen you garden and livestock?

 

[S_O_Laban]

Won't the lead seep into your ground water and poisen you garden and livestock?

I really doubt that any amount of soild lead could cause a problem. Lead is mined right out of the ground. I would think that if lead in the ground was a problem then any city or town near a lead deposit or mining area would be in trouble. I'm not aware of any lead poisoning case as a result of lead leaching into ground water.

Most lead poisoning that I've heard about included injesting products that have lead added into them, like old paint. Of course I'm no expert, so I could be wrong

 

[abaddon]

S_O_Laban,

You're probably right in practice but in theory it doesn't have to be ingested. Remember - people used to get really sick from having lead pipes way back when. But of course that would be a much higher concentration than any amount of leaching. Which is why there's probably nothing to worry about in practice. Unless your animals are into the habit of eating strange gray pellets they find on the ground. Come to think of it, Birds might do that to use them in their gizzards. But they would probably be too big to swallow unless you were using birdshot in shotguns.

Jeff

 

[middy]

Considering that just the first meter of topsoil weighs at least 12.5 million pounds per acre, and lead content is (conservatively) 25 ppm... that's more than 300 pounds of lead per acre occurring naturally.

I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[MyRoad]

Uhh, you know how to make a grown man cry. This is my dream! I want my own range!

I'm with you, pass out the tissues!

Rickstir, congrats on the range! Sounds like you have the right property/location for it. Best of luck to you!

 

[Ant Mod]

I really doubt that any amount of soild lead could cause a problem. Lead is mined right out of the ground.

The area surrounding the Ventura County range, which is located in a residential area, has 10x the amount of lead in the surface dirt then anywhere else in the city. And this is no the actual complex but the outside of it. People living around the range also have abnormally high amounts of lead in their bodys.

 

[Kodiak AK]

I may be wrong , I may be right . Safty first and all that .At the least I would filter any well water used for livestock .

 

[JohnKSa]

Cull the berms for rocks.

Make sure that you place your targets so that you won't hit the ground in front of the berm.

If possible get some sand to form the first layer of the berm that the bullets hit.