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Well,we have horses, so we need land. Right now we rent a place on about 15 acres, but it is a sub-parcel of a couple hundred acres the land lord owns and has given us complete access to. It backs up on a river we go kayaking on. Land lord is also a shooter and he and his wife are having a home built a few hundred meters away from the house we rent.

There is a 150 meter lane cleared in some woods just past one of our horse pastures. The far narrow end has several 100 meters of woods beyond it. We had set up targets at that end and land lord decided to make it nicer. He drove his backhoe over and put a huge berm at that end and cleared a bit more of the scrub brush on the edges to give a cleaner lane. He had used the lane to zero his deer rifles by sitting on a little rise and shooting across the area we have since fenced in for the horses.



That was the beginning of the berm. In this picture it is probably 7 feet high. It got just a bit higher but is about 3 times as wide now.

My land lord even taught my daughter the basics of using the backhoe.



He got an AR10 for Christmas and we'll probably take it and my new toy out this weekend, weather permitting.

So jealous....I want to drive cool things to make my own shooting range...

Right now I've got to either go out to BLM land or deal with 22/25 yard indoor ranges :(

I have three ranges within 15 minutes of the house. Ah the joys of Central Texas.

 Ouze wrote:
I also truly wish I had enough property to have a range on; I have to go to a nearby public range which is free, but also does not generally have a range safety officer available so it's probably the most dangerous place I go.

I have a much nicer indoor range available but it's sort of expensive-ish, and also it's only handguns. I really, really like hangduns but I'm not a particularly good shot so I'd prefer rifles with optics, all in all.

I'm lucky in that the local range I use allows pistols, shotguns (slugs only), and rifles up to 7.62x54mm

 Frazzled wrote:
I have three ranges within 15 minutes of the house. Ah the joys of Central Texas.

Wait... your house doesn't come with a range standard?? I thought it was part of your real estate listing

"3 bedroom, 2 bath "Ranch Style" home with 2 car garage, an attached RV garage, A/C, granite counter tops, and a 25m indoor gun range"

 Ouze wrote:
I also truly wish I had enough property to have a range on; I have to go to a nearby public range which is free, but also does not generally have a range safety officer available so it's probably the most dangerous place I go.

I have a much nicer indoor range available but it's sort of expensive-ish, and also it's only handguns. I really, really like hangduns but I'm not a particularly good shot so I'd prefer rifles with optics, all in all.

I miss having that. When I lived in Michigan we had 10 acres that ran back into state forest. The first 5 acres was grass land, with a forest back stop, not a house for maybe 15 miles. Was a perfect range.

We have a range on Campbell that is open for personal firearms, but it's a PITA to bring your weapons on base. There is a nice indoor range in town, but I've never used anything more then my XD-9. Not sure if I could take my rifle in there.

I quit using on post ranges for personal weapons a long time ago (back in the 90s when I was at Ft Hood). I hated the BS involved.

I own a small collection

Rifles
30-06, 30-30 are both for large game hunting

Shotguns
10 gauge, 12 Gauage, 20 Gauage, .410 for various types of small game hunting

Pistols
.22 small game/pest control/target shooting
.45 combat design semi-auto target shooting and home defense
.38 compact combat design semi-auto target shooting and home defense

Semi-auto Rifle
Wasr-10 target shooting and in case the government goes rogue or the zombie apocalypse happens



I have a backstop with a mound of sand in front of it style shooting range on my farm that is 75 yrds. max

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I have three ranges within 15 minutes of the house. Ah the joys of Central Texas.

Wait... your house doesn't come with a range standard?? I thought it was part of your real estate listing

"3 bedroom, 2 bath "Ranch Style" home with 2 car garage, an attached RV garage, A/C, granite counter tops, and a 25m indoor gun range"

Thats what the back forty is for. Don't hit the oil well rigs though.

 djones520 wrote:

We have a range on Campbell that is open for personal firearms, but it's a PITA to bring your weapons on base. There is a nice indoor range in town, but I've never used anything more then my XD-9. Not sure if I could take my rifle in there.

There's an indoor range in Hop-town that I know for certain you could only take pistols in. But they also consider the range part of the shop as part of the "gun club".... It's only 10 bucks per year to shoot there so it's really not that bad.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

We have a range on Campbell that is open for personal firearms, but it's a PITA to bring your weapons on base. There is a nice indoor range in town, but I've never used anything more then my XD-9. Not sure if I could take my rifle in there.

There's an indoor range in Hop-town that I know for certain you could only take pistols in. But they also consider the range part of the shop as part of the "gun club".... It's only 10 bucks per year to shoot there so it's really not that bad.

Clarksville has a place called Tennessee Gun Country, down Ft. Campbell Blvd a ways. It's a pretty nice location. I don't go to Hopkinsville at all.

Wife got me Maglula loaders for my HK91 and the new MR556.



My goodness these are amazing! I just loaded 12 HK-91 magazines (20 rounds each) in under 15 minutes, most of that spent ripping open 20 round boxes of .308. No wear and tear on the thumbs, super easy.

I highly recommend the product if you ever are loading more than one magazine!

 CptJake wrote:
Wife got me Maglula loaders for my HK91 and the new MR556.



My goodness these are amazing! I just loaded 12 HK-91 magazines (20 rounds each) in under 15 minutes, most of that spent ripping open 20 round boxes of .308. No wear and tear on the thumbs, super easy.

I highly recommend the product if you ever are loading more than one magazine!

I might have to look into that. I don't mind my .308 mags, but I hate my 9mm.

We had previously got the pistol version. I use it on my glock and the Kimber 9mm mags we have. Especially with the Kimber mags it makes a HUGE difference. I could barely get the last round in manually and there was no way my wife could do so. With the device even my daughter can fully load them.

As for the .308, I loaded 4 magazines by hand over the weekend (just got the device yesterday). It took me more time to load those 4 than to load the 12 I did today, and I cut my damned thumb doing so (those metal HK mags have sharp edges!).

 CptJake wrote:
We had previously got the pistol version. I use it on my glock and the Kimber 9mm mags we have. Especially with the Kimber mags it makes a HUGE difference. I could barely get the last round in manually and there was no way my wife could do so. With the device even my daughter can fully load them.

Yeah, the last round of my Springfield Mags are like pulling teeth. Even the mags that I've had since I bought the gun, the springs are still so stiff on them you can barely tell I've been using them for years. I'm so looking forward to my 7 month tax free, tax return this year. I'm going to buy so many toys.

That is the universal pistol loader they make (the one I have).

 CptJake wrote:


That is the universal pistol loader they make (the one I have).

Best purchase I've ever made.

The depicted mag loaders are a must have. I own 3 - AR, AK, and the pistol one works on multiple caliber magazines - and they are worth every penny. You can find them on Amazon by searching for Uplula.

My awesome wife just ordered me one for my handgun. I'll have it saturday.

Shot 2 fat does today. Not sure if I'm allowed to post pics. A friend and I executed a perfect L-shaped ambush. I shot mine at around 80 with a Foster slug (federal hydrashock) and he got his at around 25 with a Hornady sabot slug.

SHOT show looked interesting. New carbine length CZ EVO and Bren, new shorter M1A socom, Magpul's intergraded suppressed pistol that uses Glock magazines and sights and a pile of other updated goods from a slew of manufactures.

Out of everything, the ones that stood out to me as future purchases will be the MKE MP5SD, the Korth Sky Marshall, and possibly a reproduction of the Colt Python by Pietta.

A lot of new stuff coming out this year. I have a feeling my wallet might get a lot lighter.

This thread is very alien to me. I've used rifles while in service training, as well as being involved with 4.5" Mark 8 naval gun firing. That was part of a job though.

For pleasure, we Europeans tend to go to restaurants, pubs, the cinema etc - I don't see the excitement in shooting and it's not a hobby many have here.

Great, thanks for participating.

I have a .22 bolt action rifle I got basically to teach the kids about firearms. And I like .22s tbh, I'm pretty little so it's nice to have something easy for me to shoot. Where I grew up, we used to have a public used shooting area. We all went plinking at the usual targets, pop, fruit, paper targets. It was a really nice area and everyone always was very careful to stop when a new person entered the area, to pick up as many shell casings as you shot. Something I wanted my kids to experience as part of their growing up. They have to go to a shooting range here, but at least they have learned to respect firearms, how to use one properly, how *not* to use one and to appreciate that they're able to use them.

One of my favorites is a Colt/Walther .22 M4 (licensed by Colt). Great fun for plinking, and now that .22 is somewhat available and cheap again Daughter and I can go burn through a few magazines for fun.

Speaking of .22 - I went to the range the other day and shot my PMR30 some more. I am trying to sell it now.



On the one hand, it has virtually no recoil, it holds 30 rounds in the magazine, and it's a very loud gun, and it shoots a giant fireball pretty much every time. That's like, almost 100% of why I'm into shooting - if fireworks were legal here I doubt I'd own most of what I do.

The downside is the ammo, .22 WMR, is very hard to find, and fairly expensive. It's running about 50 cents a round right now, which is sort of a dealbreaker - and that's before we get into the fact that this gun only likes 3 specific brands of .22 WMR. Even with the ammo it does like, FTF's and jams are fairly common. So, that sucks.

On top of that, it's not a particularly accurate gun in my opinion - which matches the opinion of others. So what does one do with a gun that's not super accurate, can't be used for self-defense, and is expensive to shoot, and hard to find ammo for? I guess I'm sticking with selling it.




This would be my favorite gun probably if it used a more common ammo.

 Wulfmar wrote:
This thread is very alien to me. I've used rifles while in service training, as well as being involved with 4.5" Mark 8 naval gun firing. That was part of a job though.

For pleasure, we Europeans tend to go to restaurants, pubs, the cinema etc - I don't see the excitement in shooting and it's not a hobby many have here.

Good for you. Go do that instead of coming into gun enthusiast threads and telling us how pointless you think our hobby is.

 Ouze wrote:
Speaking of .22 - I went to the range the other day and shot my PMR30 some more. I am trying to sell it now.



On the one hand, it has virtually no recoil, it holds 30 rounds in the magazine, and it's a very loud gun, and it shoots a giant fireball pretty much every time. That's like, almost 100% of why I'm into shooting - if fireworks were legal here I doubt I'd own most of what I do.

The downside is the ammo, .22 WMR, is very hard to find, and fairly expensive. It's running about 50 cents a round right now, which is sort of a dealbreaker - and that's before we get into the fact that this gun only likes 3 specific brands of .22 WMR. Even with the ammo it does like, FTF's and jams are fairly common. So, that sucks.

On top of that, it's not a particularly accurate gun in my opinion - which matches the opinion of others. So what does one do with a gun that's not super accurate, can't be used for self-defense, and is expensive to shoot, and hard to find ammo for? I guess I'm sticking with selling it.




This would be my favorite gun probably if it used a more common ammo.

I wanted one for a while but then the complaints kept coming in and were similar. The cons on that pistol suck because the idea of the thing just puts a smile on my face

 Wulfmar wrote:
This thread is very alien to me. I've used rifles while in service training, as well as being involved with 4.5" Mark 8 naval gun firing. That was part of a job though.

For pleasure, we Europeans tend to go to restaurants, pubs, the cinema etc - I don't see the excitement in shooting and it's not a hobby many have here.

I feel like we have a lot in common. I like to go to restaurants, pubs and the cinema too. Oh, but I like to shoot firearms for fun in addition to that! And I know a lot of my fellow Americans do too! Aren't cultural differences interesting?


So, on topic, has anyone done anything with .300 AAC Blackout? I've noticed it's started to show up in places like Wal-Mart and not just specialty gun shops and online.

And is anyone a fan of 5.45x39? I know a lot of people were upset with the steel-core 5.45 ammo ban, but it seems like there is still a lot of 5.45 on the market for reasonable prices.

Hello, my crazed gunmen friends! I have a question that I'd like to ask for your help with.

I am writing a story as part of an assignment in my studies. One of the characters in the story is going to be armed, but as I'd prefer to include a gun that actually exists rather than just making one up, I need your scholarly knowledge on the subject (as the number of guns I can name is unimpressive). To those of you familiar with many different guns I'll ask, which gun do you say would fit the following criteria the best?

- Rifle-type, or similar
- Semi-automatic
- Reliable in use, even if it requires high maintenance
- Modern (though not necessarily shining new)
- Highly accurate
- Not too large of caliber
- Preferably suppressor-compatible

Thanks for your help.