I have a few acres outside of a small town and I was considering makeing a small Berm and possibly an elevated platform to shoot at ranges up about 150 yrds. It would only have to be big enough to accomidate one or two shooters at a time. What do you guys think? Any suggestions on how to build a Berm ?

Thanks

Invite me down, I'll help build it ! LOL ! But seriously, you should clue in the local LEO prior to opening up. They could get real shitty with you depending how remote your location is. Living in the  PRC I doubt that I'll ever have the opportunity to have my own range.

I'm in the process of building a personal range myself.  So far for a backstop I have 4 bundles of railroad crossties.  I need to get another 4 before I start moving dirt on top of them.   I'm going to put 6-8 telephone poles in the ground protruding about 9 feet in the air to stack the ties and dirt up against.   I'll have about 800 yards of range when i'm done, so this may be a little overboard for you.  I have a friend who has 100 yard range outside his back door.  He used RR ties and old tires as the core of his backstop.  Then he piled a lot of dirt on top of it.  It seems to work pretty well for him.

The shooters shoud always face north, that way you will get the most use out of it at the most times of the day and times of the year.  Anything else and the sun will be in your eyes at some point.

Find a local sitework contractor and ask him if he has any useless fill in his near future.  You might be able to get it for free.  Something that's no good as structural fill or as topsoil would be trash to them but perfect for you.

I guess I should have specified that it was only going to be a private range. I dont think the police here will mind much considering I always shoot my pistols there, occasionally even my AR. I can see the benifits of faceing the range north, but I can't really face it anywhere but east. I have a few neighbors all around 400 yrds away of where my intended range is. Only to the east do I have about 1000 yrds to play with.

There is a small range in a town near where I live that is about 300 yards away from a bank and about 800 yrds from a school. Thank god for the rural life!

We used a high track D5 for the last berm we built. Kinda over kill for a home range. (Unless you just have one sitting around). Enjoy!


Build it and they will come.

Here's my 30 yard pistol range.  This fall I'm going build a small rifle range oposite the pistol range.

Quoted: Here's my 30 yard pistol range.  This fall I'm going build a small rifle range oposite the pistol range. img.photobucket.com/albums/v40/snake806/pistolrange.jpg

How many cubic yards of dirt do you think that is? How long is it? How tall and how thick?

I am just trying to get an idea on how much dirt I will need.

cool avatar! hahaha

Actually it was cut from a sloping hill, with most of the soil removed.