DragonFire
Member
I have a smallish berm in the woods behind my house (my property) where I practice with my handguns, but we also use it occassionally to sight in a rifle or shotgun. I can get about 100 yard shot, but mostly its for short ranges, say 25 yards.
A knowledgable friend and I have several times discussed putting up a bigger back stop. One idea was to use at couple of rows of old tires, filled with dirt. I just found a source of free old tires, so I'm giving this some more thought.
I figure I'd stack the tire, say 7' high and 15' across in a slight semi-circle, with 2 or 3 rows. The rows would overlay to cover the gaps between tires. I have some dirt in front of the stack, and then more dirt plus cut brush, stumps, rocks etc. behind it (to break up or stop anything that migh somehow get through).
One problem I can see is, what would I do if I shot away a good chunk of a tire. I'm not it would be so easy to replace a tire without dismantling the whole row. And if I overlay tires between stacks (which would be stronger) the task gets worse.
Of course given a bigger backstop, I could move my target placement around alot more than I do now, so maybe this isn't a big deal.
So what do you guys thinks? Would tires make a good backstop? I'd like to just make a much bigger berm of dirt, but I can't get the equipment I'd need to do that into the woods without taking down alot more trees than I'm willing to do.
A knowledgable friend and I have several times discussed putting up a bigger back stop. One idea was to use at couple of rows of old tires, filled with dirt. I just found a source of free old tires, so I'm giving this some more thought.
I figure I'd stack the tire, say 7' high and 15' across in a slight semi-circle, with 2 or 3 rows. The rows would overlay to cover the gaps between tires. I have some dirt in front of the stack, and then more dirt plus cut brush, stumps, rocks etc. behind it (to break up or stop anything that migh somehow get through).
One problem I can see is, what would I do if I shot away a good chunk of a tire. I'm not it would be so easy to replace a tire without dismantling the whole row. And if I overlay tires between stacks (which would be stronger) the task gets worse.
Of course given a bigger backstop, I could move my target placement around alot more than I do now, so maybe this isn't a big deal.
So what do you guys thinks? Would tires make a good backstop? I'd like to just make a much bigger berm of dirt, but I can't get the equipment I'd need to do that into the woods without taking down alot more trees than I'm willing to do.