I recently got the OK to shoot in the land behind my house from the property owner who owns the field. I'm very excited to have my very own range, except there are two caveats. #1, it is flat here. If you have never been within 30 miles of Aberdeen, you don't understand flat land. #2, I can't build anything permanent. This means I can't pile up a big dirt backstop or something similar. I've got it planned out that the safest way to shoot is diagonal to the tree line. This means that the bullets have to go through about 200 yards of trees for a ricochet. Behind those trees is a slough and swamp land maybe 500 yards across. Behind that is another field, and finally a road with a house. All in all, from where I intend to shoot from, to the nearest house (which the house is a good 30 degrees off from the direction I would be shooting) is about one mile. In MN, I would have no problem shooting freely in such conditions. There would certainly be a hill, and if that didn't work, there would be much more woods for protection. With land as flat as can be here, and with minimal woods, I just don't know for sure. I feel like a handgun bullet shouldn't ricochet that far, but I'm not going to bet on it.
I've been throwing around Ideas for a simple portable backstop. By portable, I mean it must be removable by hand when I move. I can leave them out there all year. At first I was thinking something like 55 gallon drums. My concern is they are a little shorter than I would like. Trying to stack them two high, and then fill all those with something seems like a ton of work and materials. One idea I'm really leaning towards now is a wooden box filled with rubber mulch. There are all kinds of smaller scale versions out there, so I'm thinking why not make one slightly bigger. My thought is to build one with 2x8's for thickness, meaning there would be 7 1/2" of rubber mulch to stop a bullet. From what I've seen, this is adequate for the handgun, shotgun slug, muzzleloader ball, and lower velocity rifle rounds I intend to use. I would then use 3/4" plywood on the back, and on the front I would on the inside sandwich a thick rubber mat of some kind to self heal the holes, and then 3/8" plywood on the outside of the rubber to keep the integrity. I'm guessing I'll have to replace that 3/8" plywood from time to time. I'm thinking 6'x6' will be an adequate sized backstop. I will have one at 50 yards, and 100 yards. The real beauty of this I see, is at the end of the season, I can dump the mulch out, and recover all my bullets. So what do you guys think about my backstop idea?