Backstop for shooting

[Jake Benson]

Labhound:

I just called a rental place and got some prices on a bobcat that would have a fork lift attachment. $232.00 for a day, kind of expensive but doable.

I have a couple more questions for you. I assume that's dirt making up the backstop. I was going to use sand as I have read it would be better than dirt. Any comments about that? Also, as I am sure you have noticed in other posts in this thread, some have warned of the dangers of ricochets caused by railroad ties. Have you ever had any problems with this? One thing I was thinking was covering the inside walls of the railroad ties with carpet, top to bottom. Do you think that would cut down on any potential ricochets? My thinking there is any bullet reflected off the railroad tie would be caught by the inside of the carpet and neutralized.

By the way, how much dirt did you use? I was quoted here for 13 1/2 tons of sand which is a dump truck full. Did you use that much or more?

I really like your backstop. I would like to copy it. Any more tips on getting it built, etc. would be most welcome.
Thanks

 

[heeler]

How would those giant sized round hay bales work as a back stop??
I have no idea of what they cost.

 

[sansone]

before I got a tractor w/loader I shot into a big tree stump. I placed logs and stones around it for fliers. I only shot from a slightly elevated position so even a wild shot would dive into the ground.
simple solution is a big pile of sand/fill.. Here $100 gets you a dumptruck full, and renting a tractor for the day about $150.. you will have fun all day and won't miss the $250 for long

 

[we are not amused]

You are getting some good advice and some just plain silly advice.

First of all, neither a tire or a rail road tie is going to "bounce" a bullet.

People are claiming all sorts of weird ricochets, some sound possible, others.... I would suspect somebody else they didn't know about was shooting.

Frankly, ricochets don't usually go very far, because they transferred too much momentum to what they hit, and are often flattened.

Your original idea of stacked tires, sounded good, although I wonder if you realized how much work it would be to fill them with sand or dirt. I once helped a friend build something similar for a different purpose, it took a lot of buckets of dirt, lifted high to fill the darn things.

I suppose a hard packed, gently sloping mound of dirt might "deflect" a bullet, but my brothers and me, used to shoot 30-06 rounds into a gently sloping field terrace, and then dig the bullets out. We found the bullets by tracing the foot to two foot long grooves in the dirt. For the guy shooting tracers, I wonder if he wasn't just seeing the tracer material go flying, not the bullet.

When shooting anything is possible. I once saw on YouTube, where a bullet ricochet off a metal target directly back at the shooter, and hit an observer in the face. The injured observer ended up with a small cut under his eye, good thing he was also wearing eye protection. These things can happen, but are very rare, and proper respect for shooting will minimize the danger.

An uncontained dirt berm is very good and cheap to build, but will require some maintenance to keep it from eroding away.

Have fun, use some common sense, and remember, free advice is worth what you paid for it.

 

[Owen]

tracers aren't good indicators of the bullet deflection, because the pyro material breaks out of the bullet when the bullet hits something.

I've shot steel plate with APT, and on high speed video the projo punches through, but the the tracer element ends up traveling almost perpindicular.

 

[Owen]

heeler, those giant hayales won't work at all...a rifle will shoot right through.

 

[we are not amused]

How would those giant sized hay round hay bales work as a back stop??
I have no idea of what they cost.

Pretty good. The big problem is that they are round, and rot eventually. Being round, it is difficult to stack them with out gaps between them. But for a small backstop three or four feet in diameter, they work well. Be advised that the edges of the bale are very unlikely to have much stopping power, shoot to the center of the bale. Cost is variable, depending upon what they are made out of (hay, straw, cornstalks...) and availability.

 

[we are not amused]

heeler, those giant hayales won't work at all...a rifle will shoot right through.

What kind of round bales are you talking about? The ones I have used either were Four by four or five by five foot bales. Even the wheat straw bales were dense enough to stop a 30-06 unless you just shot the edge of the bale?

I live in the country, and in the past have used old round bales as backstops. I wouldn't recommend using them for feed afterwards, (the lead) but they certainly were quite capable of stopping high power bullets.

 

[heeler]

The hay bales I am speaking of are not rectangular bales normally seen but huge,heavy round bales that are generally placed in a pasture by a very good tractor with a steel pole protruding through the center of the round bale.
Very common here in Texas.

 

[labhound]

Jake I used 16 tons of top soil (two small dump truck loads). It wasn't sifted but was really clean. It was $240 total for the dirt and $140 to have it delivered. I thought about using sand but it's much harder to keep sand piled up as high as I needed it. I can keep the dirt stacked at a fairly steep angle. I didn't have a free source for the timbers so I had to buy 36 of them at $8.95 each. I don't know for sure but I don't think carpet would do much for preventing ricochets. I had originally thought about using rubber 4'X6' rubber horse stall floor mats on the sides of the timbers but decided not to. My thinking is anything that would ricochet of the side walls of the timbers would be deflected back into the dirt. I actually stacked and buried about 30 old tires under the dirt but I don't think I gained much by doing it except a lot of extra work. To those that have used the large 4x4 foot round hay bails. I have used them in the past too, two and three deep and two high. They work well as I only shot pistols into them. When they get wet and compact down nothing ever got through as I put a couple sheets of plywood behind them to see if anything was getting through. The only problem with using them is they eventually rot and its a real mess to move them when you replace them.

 

[Jake Benson]

Labhound:

Right now I think the best way to go is with the way you have done it. The only alteration I might make is to have another set of railroad ties on each side making the walls twice as long as yours. That way the targets would be enclosed as well.

I will not get this done anytime soon though. Right now I have to pay off the two hand guns I just bought, a s&w 649 and 686. But I want to get everything planned so I know what I am doing as the money is freed up to begin.

If you feel comfortable with it, could you give me an email address? I will keep you posted on how things turn out.

To everyone else, I greatly appreciate the input. Thanks,We Are Not Amused, for some common sense advice.

I appreciate all comments and advice.

 

[Owen]

we,

how do you know you were stopping the bullets?

 

[Konstantin835]

Theres a lot of good stuff here and a lot of people who have done it already so heres my idea for a backstop I hope to build. A 4' tall by 4' deep by 8' wide 3 sided box filled with sand with either 2 or 4 of those smaller bales of hay in front to act as a retaining wall and to stop ricochets. I think this would do a good job especially considering distance is very limited. I don't know how available sand is or how expensive it is some places but here I think I can get it relatively cheap and from what I have read it is much better than dirt at stopping bullets but it obviously has a problem staying mounded up.

 

[SleazyRider]

My backstop is not very sophisticated. I shoot into the endgrain of split firewood stacked in my woodpile, and replenish the wood every year with freshly cut and split wood. My stack is very dense, and there's a hillside behind it. The dry stuff, embedded with bullets, goes into my wood stove, and when I clean the grates in the firebox at the end of each heating season, I fish out an awful lot of lead. Currently, I don't recycle lead, but I plan to someday.

I usually leave a circular section of wood in the middle of the pile for rifle shooting, and I swear the endgrain sucks up the bullets like a black hole.

 

[labhound]

Jake just sent you a pm with my e-mail address.

 

[Jake Benson]

Labhound:

I lost something somewhere. When I brought up the website, there was some kind of message waiting, I thought I hit all the right buttons, but nothing ever came up.

 

[hso]

4' is far too low.

Please, no one follow the practice of shooting into the end of a wood pile and don't burn the wood with the bullets in it. Rounds can easily travel between logs and deflect out for considerable distance. In addition, if there's nothing immediately behind the pile that would serve as a safe backstop then the angle of deflection could cause the rounds to top even a 20 or 30 ft hill with little difficulty. This is fundamentally a poor backstop.

 

[Owen]

the whole melting lead in your woodstove thing is lead poisoning event in progress...

 

[labhound]

Jake just sent you a second pm with my e-mail address. Let me know if you get it.

 

[Owen Sparks]

I once saw a back stop made from a big piece of metal that used to be part of a water tower that was distroyed by a tornado. It was positioned with the top angled toward the shooter so that the lead was deflected downward into the sand. It was only used with lead pistol rounds and worked fine. If you could find a large enough piece of sheet metal, and had a way to move it, this might be an option.

 

[rori]

Hi Shadow, I'm not trying to bum rap you, I'm just worried about some poor soul being shot and crippled or killed and the good folks on this sight having to live with it for the rest of their lives, maybe in prison.I do live out west, about as far west as a person can get and thankfully we have a lot of room to set up and shoot safely. I wish all of you had the same opportunities we have.I have seen accidental discharges and I bet all of you have also. You don't have to be shooting very long to see one or more. Scares the hell out of me. Shoot safe and have a long life. Frank

 

[mortablunt]

I have a friend who grew up shooting in a rural area. He had a big hillside as a backstop. I personally favor getting a big pile of sand and dirt, then erecting plywood barricades behind it, covering the plywood with sheet metal, and then filling the barricades with sand.