Range safety and etiquette- ground strikes and ricochets

[sherrick13]

I know I make a lot of shooting tongue in cheek threads, but this one is serious as a heart attack.

If you put targets on the ground like this... like I found today at the range...

make sure they are close enough to a back stop that the ground strikes will strike the berm. Most would be surprised how much of an angle upwards they can get when ricocheting off of the ground.

I can guarantee some of his projectiles went over that berm.

Stray bullets are bad, bad news.

They can shut down a range and hurt our gun rights when they cause injury or damage.


Put your ground targets close to the berm and even use a side berm if you need to.

 

[Gunbuffer]

Some real morons at okcgc.
I remember picking up many old car key fobs that someone used for plinking.
Circuit boards and batteries everywhere

 

[Angler2312]

I for one really appreciate it when someone posts etiquette or basic safety. I'm new at shooting at ranges and personally believe you can never be too safe. Today is never a good day to get shot or accidently shoot someone.

 

[dennishoddy]

I was VP at the Ponca Gun range for thee years and President for 4 more years. I can't tell you how much baffonery goes on at an outdoor range. We try to be the range with as few rules as possible but never on safety. Every bay has a safety board with the requirements to shoot on that bay spelled out with pics even. All targets have to be on the berm between 2-7 feet on a 20' berm.
Fortunately, our drop out for the rifle bays is 4 miles, but you never know if a farmer or someone driving down the road is going to take an errant round that left the range.
I've been on the pistol bays hearing rifle rounds going over the berm and hauled butt around there to see what was going on. Most of the time it was targets put on the ground that skipped and left the range. Golf balls thrown out on the range to chase around and so on.
I've fired enough tracer rounds back in the day to actually witness how many rounds fired on flat ground go at crazy angles.