A Rifle Range - Before & After Clear Cut

[Semisane]

We have a nice 300 yard rifle range at our hunting lease. A really great place to spend some plinking and target shooting time. I spend many hours on it during the nice weather of Spring and early Summer.

Unfortunately, it's not quite as nice as it was a year ago. The landowner had the section clear cut this past Fall and our shady wind proof range is now a sunny wide open area.

Still, it's a nice place to spend some time - which I did all day Saturday and part of Sunday.

Here are before and after pictures of the range. I sure miss the trees.

 

[KDdid]

Looks like my TC Renegade. I'm lucky that here on the farm I've always been able to walk behind the house and shoot downhill. A few more new houses and I'm going to have to add a dirt backstop.

 

[Semisane]

Man KDdid, I drive about 70 miles to the hunting lease for a shooting session. But I have a small "hooch" at the club campground and usually stay two or three days. If I could shoot behind my house I'd go broke. I already buy GOEX by the 25 can case.

My Renegades all have Green Mountain barrels and shoot quite well.

 

[lakngolf]

Wow what a difference with the trees gone

 

[dogdoc]

very cool range. Sure was a lot prettier though with the trees.

 

[JDunham]

Wow, looks like a totally different spot! Should be neat to see how it changes with the new growth.

 

[Charlieyca]

Love seeing the changes a cutover goes through!

 

[FTG-05]

Looked a whole lot better with the trees! Are you doing anything with the landowner to plant more trees?

 

[Native Hunter]

It looked better with the trees, but I like it (for the purposes of a rifle range) better now. At 300 yards I would have been nervous about something (or someone) stepping out of the brush into the narrow shooting lane about the time I was squeezing the trigger.

 

[Triple C]

semisane...I like both the before and after set up. I'm with Native on the open space but looking down that land with the trees is a cool look. That's one thing we don't have at our place. We shoot from the front porch of the cabin to a distance of about 125 yds. One of my bucket list projects is to one day have a nice bench and better shooting range.

Thx for sharing!

 

[Semisane]

FTG05, the landowner has a forester under contract to manage the property. New trees were planted last month.

Safety is always a concern. The range is on a 900 acre section of private property and is several hundred yards into the property from the nearest public road. In twenty years of having this lease we've never had trespassers in that area and all members are notified when the range is going to be used.

The nice thing about the tree lined lane was the shade and not having to worry about wind effect on your groups. The last time I was on the range I was shooting my .45 caliber renegade at the 150 yard target using 350 grain full bore conicals. The wind was wicked with 15 mph gusts. It's amazing how wind can push that big ol' slow bullet around.