Are there areas of open land that's cheap in Texas?  Just a place for family and friends can go to and set up and shoot machine guns in private for a day or two (camping).
Road is not required as long as it's an areas that's accessible year round by 4X4 vehicle.  
Does not have to be near any city/town.
Does not require any utilities on land.  
Something about 60+ acres relatively flat to set up 400+ yard range.
How much does land like that cost?

Land around major metropolitan areas will be outrageous.  You will not like hearing this, but if you were to somehow purchase 60 acres of land adjacent to some rancher's 1000+ acre ranch, you will NOT be welcome . . . especially if your activities include a high volume shooting range.  My friends who own large tracts are serious about their AG exemptions, livestock and native animal populations.  I was on a 20,000 acre lease NW of Brady and we had an adjacent owner on 30 acres near the county road setup at least 10 deer blinds and come deer season we caught them numerous times shooting across the fence line and dragging the deer back onto their property.  Needless to say, the game warden became involved.

My intent is not to rain on your parade.  I keep my practice shooting on an established range.

I didn't really answer your question.  So, one data point:  my friend sold his 250 acre ranch in Llano County recently for just under $3,000,000.

I would think land around large farm, cattle ranch or game preserve would be expensive.  
He's thinking more along the lines of 2-5 hours outside of any big city...out in the open scrub land away from people.
He's planning on living in a small town away from big city and is willing to drive out 2-3 hours to get out to remote area.
He's going to retire as LEO end of this year and his wife is a semi-retired writer and they want to make the move next year.
They are not set on any particular place and is in the process of looking for now.

ETA he's not looking for a place to hunt, just a place to shoot his machineguns and maybe long range rifles.

I would think he would need to look west of Ozona.  Ozona is 4 hours west of Austin and 3 hours west of San Antonio.  Pretty bleak looking between Ozona and Fort Stockton.  I'm not familiar with prices out there.  A few years ago, we used to see property ads for the Rock Springs area down to Del Rio.

I was going to say look in this area too.

Yeah the closer you get to Mexico, the faster property value will drop.

But he will have machine guns to help fight the bad hombre off...  thanks obama

The general rule is that land prices drop by about 50% for every hour further away you get from the EDGE of one of the metroplexes (DFW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio) If you are looking for $1000/acre land, you are going to have to drive 3 - 4 hours.  There are parts of the Panhandle that are not good for farming, where prices get reasonable. Land with a lot of deep gullies/ravines that are ideal for shooting...but you are talking 4 hours from the Fort Worth.
West TX is going to get you the same thing...a long drive to get to your cheap land, but if you get far enough south, you get that added adventure of drugs and illegals.

Your experience shouldnt be the yard stick for others. Between my family and i, there has never been a problem with a smaller track next to a larger one. Just because some may take advantage like what happened in your case doesnt mean eveyone will. Hell, the guy next to me ( who has the large track of land)  gave me a gate key to his place so i could hunt and shoot when ever i want. Does that mean every land owner will do that , no.  So lets not jump to any conclusions about how either party will react.

The smaller owner usually gets shit only when they are being a dick to the larger owner .  Example .. don't complain about dust if they are working the dirt.

http://www.landsoftexas.com/United-States/all-land/5000-250000/over-55-acres/zoom-9/bounds-31.846564233-n98.1415611426-33.4284928482-n95.6751304785/map/

I use that to look around dfw.
the general range I look at is over 50 acres so that they can't tell me if I Can shoot or not. and under 250k.

I check it periodically waiting for my chance to find something closer.

I screwed with Lands of Texas, and a couple of other websites, for almost a year when looking for a few acres of country land.  YMMV, but what I found was that if it's on Lands of Texas,  it's ridiculously overpriced and/or seriously defective in some way (landlocked/no access, no possibility of electric or water, deed restricted, leased for surface mining).  The wife and I wasted 12 - 15 weekends, and put thousands miles on my truck, driving out to look at property that was nowhere what we were looking for, flat out misrepresented, and/or overpriced.  The one 'good' place we found on our own ended up costing us some bucks and months on a failed contract, because the property ended up having a Surface Mining Lease, less than a 1/2 mile from an active coal mine.


Identify the area you are interested in, at least down to the county level, then sign a buyers agent contract with a realtor in that area.  A buyer's agent contract cost you nothing, their pay comes out of the seller's 6% (3% for sellers realtor, 3% for the buyers realtor), it just says that after the agent starts showing you stuff, you will not stiff them on commission by going doing a side deal.   A motivated buyers agent will put you on property before it ever hits a website, sometimes before it hits mls. If they don't hook you up within a couple of months (defined in the agreement you sign), you move on.

The lady we used spent almost 2 hours with us asking questions about what we were looking for, talking to us about properties we looked at but did not like, and taking notes:  Was electric already on the property a requirement, elect at least elect one property line?  Water well on the property already?  If not, was water available at a reasonable drilling cost?  Is there running water / surface water? Are roads state\county maintained, all weather, seasonal?  Is there direct access to a public road or is it deeded access?  Mineral rights, surface rights? Is there current oil production, pipeline easements? Is there a current ag, timber, or wildlife tax exemption (very valuable).  Is it fenced? Cross fenced?  Is it CRP land and when does the contract expire? Is the property, or part of it, in a floodplain?

Unless you have seen all of these questions answered in a Lands of Texas ad,  get a realtor and save yourself time and money.  Be ready to drop everything to drive out and look at property...fair priced listings a good realtor can turn you onto are not likely to stay on the market long.

Good source for land

one thing to consider with the "closer to mexico = cheaper" is that depending on where you're talking about, the deer are bigger and there's more exotics, so you'll be competing with hunters too.

If it has any kind of hunting on it, it won't be cheap.

Look up Brewster or Hudspeth counties.
Cheap land waaaaaaay out there. About 10-12 hour drive from Houston.

Got about 60 acres for about $60,000 about 10 years ago. 2 hours from Dallas. Ravines, creek/creek bottom, a small pond, deer, hogs, armadillos, wee wittle bunnies.... A bit North of Palestine. EAST Texas. (Don't have to go to the desert or meh hee co.)  

It WAS 10 years ago though.

Also got a plot of land on Cedar Creek Lake fo free.

I know you said Texas but Mesa land in NM is dirt cheap FYI.