I live out in the country and have around 6 acres of land.  I have a small shooting “lane” that I’ve set up in the backyard (see pictures....red square is backstop, green square is shooting bench). The 10ft wide lane has a wooden garden fence on the left, and a barbed wire fence on the right. It’s about 25yds long, but unless I’m trying to sight in an optic on a rifle, I just shoot my handguns at around 10-15 yards.  

My current backstop is pretty basic (not the best)...just a 5ft tall x 6ft wide stack of 10” diameter logs around 2ft long…stacked so that you are shooting into the front of them, not the sides.  It works, but it’s still not ideal.  I always try to shoot at the bottom of the wood stack, just because if a bullet eve made it through, it would at least run into the dirt before it ever came out the back side.

I’m trying to find a way to make a better backstop.  I don’t have enough room to put a huge pile of dirt there big enough to do any real good.  I was thinking about putting a ½” steel plate behind the wood pile I have now, but I’m not sure if that would cause a bunch of ricochets or not if a bullet ever made it through the wood and hit the metal.  I also thought about pouring a 6ft wide x 1ft thick x 6ft tall concrete wall….but I think eventually you would end up shooting through it.  A big wooden box filled with old tires?  Stacks of railroad tied with rebar holding them together?

Any idea ideas?  This is the only good place I have to set up a backstop where I know there are no houses for at least a few miles behind it.

What you want depends on caliber.

What you gonna shoot?

You said you don't have enough room to put a huge pile of dirt there, but it looks like you do.

What are the yellow lines?

find someplace nearby that sells shredded tires (ask your tire shop)
build a box with a large enough frontal area for your needs. depth will be based on what you are shooting into it.
mild steel plate at the rear and RR ties wall behind and wider then your target to give a little extra insurance.
less then 2 foot of shredded rubber will stop most HG rounds.
this works great for recovering the lead and recasting.
if you dont car about recasting or cant find the shredded rubber....
look on craigslist for free old tires. stack them filling with sand every level.
offset them as you build a wall.
will want to be about 3 tires deep to stop most rounds.

Mostly .22LR, 9mm, .357mag, .45acp, maybe some .223 stuff every now and then. Mostly just pistol calibers.

Used tires stacked and re bared into the ground fill/cover with dirt

Sorry....yellow lines are the barbed wire fences.....

I think by the time I piled up the dirt, it would be pretty wide at the bottom, but be too narrow at the top of the pile to provide much stopping ability.

Erect three walls to contain most of the dirt

So use Railroad ties to hold the dirt to say 6ft wide, you've got room to pile 'back'.

You're hitting the wood first, right?

Plywood with either a 2x4 or 2x6 sandwiched between sheets.  Fill with pea gravel.  I have tested this setup with a 2x6 first and found nothing from 9mm, 45acp, 300blk, 5.56 will penetrate it.  Then I tried the setup with a 2x4 and the results were the same. The pea gravel just eats the rounds up and "resets" by filling the hole to be shot again.  You can keeps shooting until all the gravel has come out of the holes you made.  If you are really worried, I would put a steel backer, but really, as long as the gravel is topped off, you will not have issues. When it gets too shot up, just replace the plywood on the front by laying the wall on its back.

4' x 8' sheet would be a decent backstop.









Put this in front of it.

Local range here uses hay bales as the first line of stoppage material with trees/lumber behind them.

I was thinking of doing the same thing and will be curious to see what others think.

think could catch on fire maybe

Railroad ties cut to whatever length works for the area.  Use plywood to dress the shooting side, replace as needed.  Make a layer cake behind it of dirt/gravel/cinderblocks/tires/whatever.

That's what mine is made of and works good.

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I use stacks of pickup tires filled with dirt.Stops 308 and 06 ball at 100 yards.

Light handgun rounds barely penetrate-same with 22s.Never had any bounce off,but could happen.I have a plywood target frame in front of the tires,so that should stop anything from bouncing back.

At my last house,I built a 3 sided box and filled it with dirt (6X6X6 pressure treated).No easy way to take it with me when I moved.

railroad ties are about worthless as a stop by themselves. .. they get shredded pretty quickly, and have to be replaced pretty fast. id say tires with sand would hold up well.... poly barrels filled with sand might work ok...

a u shape wall of cross ties / lumber... holding a large pile of sand does very well..... the lumber keeps the sand more upright, / higher.... and the sand stops the rounds from hitting the wood. something simular to this would / should hold up very well, for a long time. although id make it U shaped vs V shaped. basically a square with one side only about 2 feet tall.. gives you wider, / deeper sand target. then you could always use a mesh / screen table to get bullets back out of the sand to recycle very few years or so.

With poly barrels filled with sand,you are making some good size holes with every round.

With tires,the rubber stretches-you don't lose any dirt/sand at all.If you just shoot a tire,it's hard to find where the bullet went in-sometimes it's just a little clean spot.

The poly barrels are semi-self healing.  My center barrel is ready to be replaced and the sand level has dropped about 8 inches.  I've been shooting it for about 5 years now.

I'm making one of these when I get home. I need something to test reloads at the house and that would be perfect!

This was the idea that I had.

This, but add a roof with railroad ties to catch any ricochets that go up.

Thanks-I did not know that.

I had some 55gal plastic barrels here I tried-they leaked like a sieve.Cracked the barrels pretty good too.

taggage

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the marines use the tires to bulid a shoot house for room to room clearing drills.
not sure what the specs are, but they let us use it for paintball once.

it is as said above. stacks of tires filled with sand. off set like bricks used to build a house.
they were only 1 set deep and seemed to stop everything they threw at it.

Where does one get used RR ties and what is the best method of securing them?

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-Used-Railroad-Tie-Cresote-Treated-Common-7-in-x-9-in-x-8-ft-Actual-96-in-5100000070908000/100023488

Get ahold of some Hesco's and fill em up?

http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/destinations/shooting_ranges/outdoor_shooting_best_practices.pdf

I got mine at the local feed store, about $11 each.

I secured them by drilling 1/2" holes through them, then pounding 1/2" rebar through the holes.  You're limited by the drill length, I used an 18" drill bit from Lowes, so you'll have to stagger the rebar every couple of courses.

Good luck!