We had some marvelous weather over the weekend. Sunny and warm, with only a hint of a breeze. On top of that, it has been pretty wet lately, so the ground was nice and soft. It all came together to give me the perfect opportunity to rebuild my backyard shooting range.
I gathered up all the 6×6 timbers from where I had the old shooting range. I slapped that old range together in a hurry when we moved into our current house, and it was never meant to be a permanent range. For one thing, that original backstop only let me get back to 100 yards, and I prefer to sight in my hunting rifles for 200 yards. That gives me the ability to hold dead-center on the vital zone when I’m anywhere from about 60 to about 350 yards, and the bullet will still land where it’ll drop a big game animal like a rock.
I staked out a new spot to move my range several months ago, where I can get all the way back to about 300 yards, but the weather wasn’t cooperating with my plans to rebuild the backstop.
Finally, last weekend, it all worked out. I threw all the timbers from the old range into the truck, along with a bunch of railroad ties I’ve collected the last couple of years. I tossed in some old fence posts, too, grabbed the tools, and headed out into the pasture.
I finally have a first-class backstop for my backyard range. The foundation is a layer of railroad ties, and the backstop itself is two stacks of 6×6 timbers, offset so that there is no gap that runs all the way through. Two layers of rubber floor mats from old horse trailers on the front and another trailer mat on the back round it all out.
Now if I could just get a few hours of windless, warm weather to put that new range to use, I’d be happy. Looking at the forecast, though, I might have to wait until June.
