backstops

[wolc123]

What do you use ?   I spent a few hours this afternoon beefing mine up a little.  It has served me well for about 25 years, but was in need of a little reinforcement.  I made it to help get ready for a hunt out west.   A few years before that, my uncle, who lives next-door, had his nephew (on my aunt's side) drop off a big truckload of stumps, behind our barn.   He thought he was getting "free firewood", but it was just a big pile of unsplittable garbage.   I dragged them back to the far corner of our longest hayfield and heaped them up in a pile with my grandad's loader tractor.  I added a few buckets full of dirt a few times over the years, as they rotted down.   At one time, I had marked stakes every 50 yards out to 500 yards, but I have been mostly shooting just out to 100 yards lately, now that all of my hunting is in NY.  I still check the 300 yard performance of my rifle, every other year or so.  

Getting my hair parted one time, by a slug fired by a neighbor at a deer, convinced me of the importance of a good backstop for target shooting on our farm that is as flat as a pancake.  That backstop has stopped thousands of bullets over the years.  I know for sure that it did it's job at least one time, and that alone was well worth the time and effort it took to construct.   I was on my 50 yard bench with my scoped 16 gauge slug gun.  Just as I was squeezing the trigger, I caught the red color of an atv in the scope, behind and approaching the backstop.  It was too late to stop the bullet, for the sear had already released, and it was on it's way.  The lead would have been just about perfect.  I had on earmuffs, so I never heard the machine approaching.   Me and a friend, who was in a hedgerow behind me cutting firewood with his chainsaw, both heard the yell of the rider.  We ran back there to check for blood or worse, but found nothing.   The rider had escaped with just a good scare, thanks to that backstop.  

Another memorable incident that happened back on the range, was when I was checking the zero of my deer rifle in the early fall, prior to archery season.   I was alone back there at the time (or so I thought).   The rifle was resting on a shooting stand, on my 100 yard bench, and I walked downrange to change targets.   I looked back up-range and saw a young buck walk out of the adjacent brush field.  He walked right up to the rifle (that was pointed my way) and placed his nose next to the muzzle.   I was quite sure there was not a round in the chamber, but the thought went through my mind of the headline in the newspaper "Deer shoots hunter with his own rifle".    

Last October, my 1/4 acre pond, which had held water for more than 25 years, dried up completely after the worst drought we have had in my 52 years.  I took advantage of that opportunity to clean out all the sediment that had built up over the years, and also made it a few feet deeper using my 4wd, loader tractor.   I ended up with a big pile of dirt next to the pond.   Today was a great day to move all that dirt back to my backstop with that tractor.   It has a nice canopy, which made it very comfortable under the blazing sun.   Now my backstop would probably stop an armored piercing artillery round, for many years to come.                     

[rachunter]

dirt mound

[dbHunterNY]

we have backstops at the local gun clubs. i'm at the southern portion of the adirondacks and foot hills. where i am i'm hard pressed to need a back stop and i'm often limited by terrain and sharp changes in elevation for shooting distance.  

[Nomad]

I paid some local hillbilly to drive some dirt moving thing across a field to our land where he made a berm for me. 

Charged me $300, with no loading ,drive time and off loading then repeting I figure he made out pretty well , hopefully his kids got new shoes that Christmas , cheap ones but at least new .

Edited July 5, 2017 by Larry302