Poppers and steel targets

Bob

Bob

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Winnipeg
Had our monthly meeting last night and members of the old guard were #####ing again about handgunners and steel targets. The rifle range is 200 m with the trap house between in and the handgun range. Trap shoots over the handgun berm at 45% so its closed on the nights trap is shooting. The handgun/overflow range is 100m x 30m approx with berms on three sides with the back berm being the highest.

Now everyone shoots from the same line 100m line under the roof and they are complaining now that the ODD time ricochets come out of the handgun range and land on the roof of the rifle firing line.

Besides poppers we have a plate rack with 8X8 steel plates, hinged at the bottom that can be reset with a pull of a rope. Is this setup fine or does it need to be changed. What can we do to shut these people up. While on a whole they wish the handgunners would disappear it makes up 2/3's of the membership.Infact at least once of every meeting one of them brings up the thought of shutting the range down and selling the land.I wonder where that money would go.
 
First off, how far apart are the rifle and handgun lines?

The plates are fall back style? Are the poppers also rear falling? If so, they MIGHT actually be telling the truth about the very odd richochet.

You may need to put shrouding above your rack and around your poppers. to prevent the vertical escape of ricochets. We had to do that at my local range; extend the backstop overhang to completely shroud the falling plate rack.
 
More food for thought...

What's the condition of your plates and poppers? If they have divots, they're more likely going to have stuff coming back.

What's the bottom of your plate rack like? We had plates that the splatter would go down the plate and then hit the base and come straight back at the shooter. We had to weld an angle on to them or make sure the base of the plate had a piece of wood between it and the shooter.
 
Between the edge of the rifle line to the berm which obstures the handgun line about 50 yards. The plate fall back, hinged at the bottom rear and they are not pot marked very much as only handgun shooters can use them.The rail they sit on is flat and might need some angle iron. The rack which is mobile usually sits 10-25m off the line leaving 75-90m open until the berm.
 
Fall back targets can cause ricochets to glance upwards.
Top suspended swingers usually deflect bullets down.
You might want to shroud the plates. This should trap any bullets deflected upwards.
IF bullets are leaving the range, you COULD have problems down the road.
 
Make sure you have no angle iron across the front of your knockdown set. Bullets that go down strike the angle and come back at the shooter, Better to have a flat plate there. We had this problem with a couple of our 5 set knock downs we use for CAS.
 
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