Ok, prior to the infamous Swamp Shoot at my place ARock, myself and DrJeffAllen set up some new target stands on my place.

I have added to it slightly with the help of Mojo and now things are pretty much laid out the way I would like.  The problem is the trees on my property are really getting shot to pieces.  No kidding, I would bet some of the trees have over 100 impact marks/scars.  We are talking 30+ trees that are getting damaged.  

At first I thought the rounds would tend to impact intoa low hill behind the target stands, but the trees seem to be taking the brunt of the impact.

Second part of the problem is ricochetting rounds.  When suppressed weapons are used, you can really hear rounds bouncing back through the trees.  Not good, not safe.

I am doing some serious thinking about the Spring AR15 DFW/RedGoat shoot, and I have come to a conclusion.

There must be a backstop in place to protect the trees, or the range needs to be moved further back on my place toward a natural berm.

I need the guys that have come to my place to decide what they would ratehr do:

1.  Haul in sand for a berm (I might be able to get the sand for free, but it means a trailer and lots of shovelers) there may be other options availabe for building an acceptable (not a stack of old tires and rubbish) backstop.

2.  Move the range.  This means building a bridge for foottraffic across the creek, and would require some good scavenging by you guys for bridge making supplies.


You guys put your minds to it and see what you can come up with.  

Save my trees, make the range safer.

TheRedGoat


ps.  Personally, I would prefer to move the range further back toward the natural berm.  I have some materials we could use to build the bridge, and it would take less time.  I will need someone to find us some free timbers we can use to span a 15 foot creek, though...  I ain't got the dinero for it.

It was mentioned before about some type of fiber/material that is a byproduct of some process. Anyways they will give it to you for free. Forget the name... real helpful huh?

Another option is fill dirt.. You can get dumptrucks to dump it in a row. We got two dumptrucks full for free when we saw the county digging out the ditches on the side of the road..

Hope this helps

When the county was cleaning ditches down our road, I was able to get some free dirt dumped behind my house for a small road/culvert.  I asked them to deliver some more loads to the range.  They looked at the terrain, mud, slope and trees to be negotiated and said "Not just No, but Heck no!"

The ground on my place is saturated with springs.  Seven or so, with 5 of them near the range (ie. The Swamp Shoot).  Big heavy trucks are not fond of getting stuck.

TheRedGoat

I had considered this as an option, but I think it might become an eyesore.  

And the 'range' is about 25 yards wide now.

TheRedGoat