I have a home range; I used a retaining wall of railroad ties for the back and dirt for the filler, with a row of ties at the base of the front to prevent some of the erosion; i planted grass on it and the erosion has been minimal. For what you want to do, your design wi work fine, and with any real thickness ( mine is about 10 feet thick at the base , tapering to about 2 feet thick at the very top, with a midde thickness of 5 or 6 feet, minimum, plus the ties) you will have more than enough safe backstop for even the .50 BMG.

 

Thank you! I looked at railroad ties. Admittedly, they would be easier to stack but they are much more expensive than telephone poles. Maybe I would buy enough to put at the base of the front. I am definitely planning on planting grass. Thanks again.

So far I've had two 18-wheeler loads of dirt delivered. It looks surprisingly small. Now I know how my wife felt that first night...

 

I don't understand the front sand. I'd think all sand and dirt should go behind whatever kind of wall you build.

That wall will likely need rear sides to help contain the sand and dirt.

Seems to me your natural hill is backstop enough for an 88mm. But the wood wall will allow posting targets and defining the shooting zone, as well as containing whatever you put behind it. The sand and dirt fill behind it would prevent ricochets.

 

I don't understand the the front sand. I'd think all sand and dirt should go behind whatever kind of wall you build.

That wall will likely need rear sides to help contain the sand and dirt.

Seems to me your natural hill is backstop enough for an 88mm. But the wood wall will allow posting targets and defining the shooting zone, as well as containing whatever you put behind it. The sand and dirt fill behind it would prevent ricochets.

Putting the wood as the face would be a huge maintenance issue, as the wood will very quickly become chewed up in the impact areas , and will just as quickly form "hot spots" of accumulated spents projectiles, which carries with it a serious potential for projectiles reflecting back to the shooter.....with the sand/dirt, it collapses around the projectiles, self sealing in a way the wood cannot, and a simple and occasional turning and light sifting or raking prevents possible hot spots.

There are many, many better options for posting targets , many of which are very simple , durable, and cost effective.

 

Here’s the berm I use for handgun shooting. A pile of dirt, basically.

 

The same pile of dirt, from the front, but before the vegetation took hold.

 

The same pile of dirt, from the front, but before the vegetation took hold.

Would you be comfortable shooting rifle at that? I would depending on what is behind it through the woods.

 

Yes. The woods are pretty thick behind the berm, and there are no buildings for about a mile.

Edit: Ok, the nearest building is .65 miles from the berm. But behind the berm is almost 500 yards of woods.

 

The old telephone poles is a good idea. I work for a municipality and they built a range on our water plants property for officers to shoot using the same method your bluprint shows and it works great. Now if the cops would pick up there spent shells lol

 

What would you do? Make a dirt pile and call it good? Maybe I'm being paranoid

In my opinon, dirt pile is what stops the bullets. Can be sand, dirt, hill, all of that is the actual bullet stop.

Wood is what contains the dirt if needed, and also gives the target area/reference to aim at. Either by painting a square, or by your placement of targets on the wood, or target stands in front of the wood, you are defining where it is safe to shoot. But it is the dirt behind that defined area that is the actual bullet stop.

The wood should not be thought of as the primary bullet stop. Sure, it may catch some fliers depending upon caliber and the wood, but generally should not be relied upon for that role.

The best way to stop fliers, is to have a well defined shooting area and direct the bullets there. Don't let people shoot outside of that. For example, build a 3 mile tall wood wall if you want (exaggeration), but paint a 3 foot by 3 foot square at the base of it and always put targets only in front of that square, and tell people not to shoot outside of that square. Directly behind that square you know there is enough sand and dirt and hill to stop a .50BMG.

If beyond the hill is danger of someone being there getting hit, then more and more and more dirt on top of the hill is better (in my opinion) than wood.

Main point I'm trying to express is a preference for sand or dirt instead of wood as the primary bullet stop. And also a preference for using wood to define where the bullets are supposed to go

 

At our range, which is railroad ties with dirt in front of it, we have an eyebrow of angled steel in front of the shooting benches to prevent someone from launching a round over the berm. And I does have marks where shooters have touched off a round before being in shooting position.

 

Also, for hanging paper targets, I


Thats a good idea for a mixed use range , but for a small private range its not really necessary; in this case, the OP has a hill behind the range; in my case, my backstop is not quite 20 feet high ( my shooting line is never higher than about 5 or 6 feet, and averages around 48 inches) and there is about 20 miles of unihabited forest behind it...

Other than having no backstop at all, the biggest thing I have seen with private ranges ( not club ranges, I mean personally owned ranges) is that people do not consider the backstop material carefully enough, and that they use inappropriate materials for reactive target surfaces, resulting in serious safety issues.

 

We don need no steenking backstop!

 

View attachment 434372 We don need no steenking backstop!

Replace target holders with anti gun types. Tell them they are holding protest signs for a gun ban demonstration.

A sound theory, might be a few details to work out.

 

A lot of people are using Tires stacked up and filled with dirt now,seen some pretty cool courses made out of them and you can always find free tires

 

Tires make a good base, and are great for side safety walls when properly anchored and filled with dirt; you just have to know your area's codes, in some places tires are a no no.....

 

Do not rely on telephone poles alone for stopping bullets. We shot various things with various calibers once at our outdoor range. I distinctly remember 7.52x54 going through one like it was nothing.

The backstop for our indoor range is stair stepped metal that will stop .50 BMG. There is chopped up rubber tires stacked on and in front of it. It is treated with fire retardant to cut down on fire. We have it under rubber mats so we have to have the metal filtered out every year or so. Without the mats the rubber can be used but you have to snow shovel it up again every so often. This cuts down on maintenance because the metal will filter down to the bottom this way and eliminate the need to clean it out every year.

I almost wonder if cheap pea gravel could be used the same way. Dirt is probably easier and cheaper.

As for tires a nearby SO has a shoot house made of them but it has been closed for quite a few years now. No one knows why but we suspect something bad happened. I would be really careful with tires. Maybe those on the backside filled with dirt might be a good safety net. Check with the fire department. Tire fires suck and they try to avoid them at all costs. The last thing you need is to build one and have it go up in smoke. The fire department will be pissed if you didn't check with them first.

I have heard you can contact the NRA and they have plans for a safe range.

As far as your plan the front of the design is the most important. If you have enough dirt piled high up in front and thick on the bottom it should be good. You should be able to find how much dirt a .50 BMG can penetrate online.

 

Wood is not a good stopper. A milsurp 7X57 173 will go thru a 40" hickory tree, cut the wire fence tacked on the backside, cut a footlong slash in the sod and disappear somewhere in the NW direction. It can be used to contain your sand or dirt but it will chew up and fall apart rapidly. You definitely need something thats selfhealing like rubber tires. Bias ply are preferable to steel belts. The steel belts do more bullet damage which leads to more tire shredding. Ive used poly barrels to contain the lead but I have to replace them after a few thousand rounds. Sand, especially dry sand is the best containment medium and its self healing as long as its deep enough to not blow up after every shot. I dont have the 50 to try but it doesnt take a lot of sand to stop a 375 full jacketed bullet at 2750 fps.If legal a rubber type sheet with tires stacked and packed with sand will be a stable safe backstop. It doesnt matter what you use you will have maintenance to do on it just because everything eventually moves downhill.

 

I ran a Bobcat for 12 hours today. My intention was to just pile up the sand I hand delivered so I could do some .22 shooting this weekend while I finalize the design.

That was before I go started with the Bobcat. Those things are fun!

My wife had asked me to dig out some of hillside so the backstop was higher. I didn't think I could - I thought it was rock. Nope. It was caliche.

I now have a 15' (or so) wide shooting lane dug into the hill and a massive pile of dirt. I've started putting the sand in front of the dirt. I'll post pics when I finish tomorrow. It's big.

50 BMG won't even make a dent.

 

I ran a Bobcat for 12 hours today. My intention was to just pile up the sand I hand delivered so I could do some .22 shooting this weekend while I finalize the design.

That was before I go started with the Bobcat. Those things are fun!

My wife had asked me to dig out some of hillside so the backstop was higher. I didn't think I could - I thought it was rock. Nope. It was caliche.

I now have a 15' (or so) shooting lane dug into the hill and a massive pile of dirt. I've started putting the sand in front of the dirt. I'll post pics when I finish tomorrow. It's big.

50 BMG won't even make a dent.

Awesome! Can't wait to see the pics.

I started a thread a while back when for the heck of it I built a sand bullet box.

Might be worth reading the thread for other's opinions on the effectiveness of sand. Does not take a lot of contained sand to be an effective bullet stop:

https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/sand-box-bullet-stop.1702848

From that thread, this is what I built:

Interior is 24" wide by 18" deep by 18" tall. Wraped by 3/4" self sealing rubber horse stall mat. Filled with 450 pounds of sand

At the time of the pics, I first tested with my snubby revolver, but have since of course put a lot of .223, .308, .30-06 rounds into it. Nothing goes through, and no damage. Over time I expect to just keep nailing a new square of plywood onto the front (at a rate of one every couple years or so).

Ground rises up behind it and is my woods, and I'm shooting slightly down, into the lowest spot. 10 miles till next road. It is totally safe without any backstop because gentile hill behind is the natural stop, but I like to keep all rifle shots into the bottom of the pile of wood I have there, now all going into the box

 

Saw this online and thought it looked incredible.

 

Here it is so far. I have more to do today.

 

I don't know your rain situation, but you might have to drain.

Some, such as Willie Pete, like a lot of water on their range

While my shots go to the low spot on my property, there is a creek taking the water away into the swamp. Not a well defined creek, but a flow of water when it rains heavy. The swamp isn't well defined either (just a low flat area in the back of my property), but soaks up the water, and has a creek leading out of it meandering far around behind the hill behind my range. Bullets can't hit the creek because the hill is in the way. But water is drained naturally, slowly, away from my range.

Also, my range is grass covered, so nothing gets muddy. Soft ground in the Spring, but not muddy. However in winter, can be covered by 3 feet of snow. I walk out there with snowshoes to shoot

 

Sand works very well indeed as a buffering media; it has excellent "sealing" properties (it basically fills in the holes as they are made) and has good density; it's only real drawback is that it erodes quickly; I see a lot of people build their berms of dirt, and then surface the face with sand, which is easy to sift, looks nice, and has the added benefit of you or a spotter being able to see impacts at distance (helpful for sighting)..... The sand-face/dirt structure folks get the best of both worlds, as their overall berms have less erosion (they plant or sod them) and the facing surface is easily raked back into place occasionally to prevent it from all sliding down.....

 

I don't think I'll have much drainage issue. It generally still slopes downhill and we don't get too much rain anyway.

 

I don't think I'll have much drainage issue. It generally still slopes downhill and we don't get too

Good. Now you need some shade and a bench.

What is your distance? I put shade and the bench at 100 yards. The bench has wheels so I can move it closer. But the shade is a metal frame shed staked to the ground year round, with a tarp over the roof. I take the tarp off in the winter (because snow would otherwise crush it).

For shade up closer than 100 yards, I'm lucky to have a treeline close to the backstop, so any of my pistol shooting after 2pm is shaded

I also built a scrap wood table that I can set my gear on for pistol shooting. Nice to stand behind to shoot, set the guns and ammo on it. At 100 yards the shooting bench serves that purpose. I guess the difference between them is one is made to sit down at (rifle), and the other is made for standing near (pistol).

 

If I trim a few trees I can get to about 250 yards. I'll probably set a bench at 100 & another at 200 or 250.

The longer ranges are shaded with trees. For pistol distance, I have a deck gazebo that I don't use anymore that will be perfect.

 

You are putting good effort into making a good dirt pile embankment backstop. I was able to make use of the lay of my land as is, having a slight downhill toward the target, then my own rising uphill woods behind it. No houses, and next road 10 miles away.

Mine doesn't look like much in the pics, but I like it. It is my happy place, 250 yards behind my house


100 yard rifle view. Rifle shots go into the lower targets into the sand box at base of wood pile.

Up close pistol view. Handgun shots go into upper two targets and into the wood pile behind the sand box. Hill goes up immediately behind that, all on my property. I have a tree stand up the hill, which has a view back down toward the shooting range.

 

Apparently, per my wife, my range is somewhat of an eyesore. Good thing I wear the pants!

 

Once the ground cover comes back it will look better. You could always plant ice plant. That stuff grows and don't need watering in the shoulders of freeways and it stops a semi. In might help stop a bullet or two.

 

For holding paper targets and other light weight targets, chicken wire and clothes pins works well.
We made one using some old chicken wire and a couple t posts and rebar. Pins were only a couple bucks at Wally World.

Golf balls on tees can be fun too.

 

The wood isn't even needed, only there for helping to keep the sand and dirt behind it from sliding forward and spreading down.

Unless grass gets growing, what else will contain the sand and dirt?

If the pile is huge enough then it self contains as it's own pile.

Sand, dirt, crushed rock, river gravel - all have an angle of repose. Eventually the angle becomes flat.


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