I admit - I have no experience in this and would appreciate your opinions.

• The shooting tower is a nice enclosed large deer blind on a tower where the muzzle would be about 13ft above ground.
• The red shooting line (south) traverses a gradual positive change in elevation +20ft at the 600 yards target.
• The yellow shooting line (west) traverses a gradual drop change in elevation -13ft at the 500 yard target.
• These are ground level elevations and do not account for the shooting tower at 13ft high and target height steel gongs mounted at 3ft high.
• Note the dense forest/coverage at the end of the red/south shooting line.
• Shortly after the west/yellow shooting line, the ground dramatically drops down 30ft to what we call "the pecan bottoms" of flat land.
• I placed the shooting origin on the north/west corner of our property, as far away from wildlife as I could so to not disrupt hunting areas which are rich to the west near the river. I don't want to do much shooting in other places to avoid messing with the hunting. I cannot easily move this tower so want to keep it there.
• I own pretty well most of the land in the image from the road on the right, all the way west to the river and just to my house at the lower right.

I need help and tips on saftey and what to do. I'm thinking I need to drop some dirt burms at the end of the firing lines at 500/600 yards and maybe in a couple other places.

How large (I hear 10ft high?) and what is the cheapest type of fill and where to buy in Robertson County? Would I need this much on the red/south shooting line if the ground is already rising and I have a thicket behind the target?

Me (and whoever I could convince to join me) would be shooting suppressed almost always and we are good with the neighbors as long as we are not out there all the time.

Any other advice is appreciated. TIA!

Don't shoot your house

Sorry to be that guy but this seems like a bad idea.

Probably best you only shoot west and not towards the road/your house.

Yup. Do the opposite. Put the tower near the house and shoot back the other direction.

I have a 700 yard range and a 8 ft berm.

Berm is 100 foot long and 10 ft wide at the top. Wide enough to drive a 75hp tractor across it.

Big enough to safely stop a .50 BMG or 20mm

Don't buy dirt. Get a tractor and scraper to dig it onsite.

8 ft is too low. Definitely should be 10ft or higher.
Nobody lives behind the berm for 4 miles but too easy for a guest to shoot over it with full auto

I curved the ends slightly.
Also made sure it didn't hold water so it is sloped away from shooting area.

Biggest issue I have is hogs rooting around it messing it up.

Don't count on a thicket for safety.
Don't shoot towards your house. Bad idea.

Based on the +20 rise on the 600 yard target it sounds like you would be shooting up hill from a 13 ft platform. I would put berms there for sure at least 10 foot probably higher since the house is that way. Will give the bullet something to hit after passing through having been aimed up from the stand. Going into the bottom with that amount of drop you could get away with 10 foot or maybe shorter as the angle would be a downward trajectory overall. At least that is my thought. I have wanted land to build a range on since I started shooting. Maybe one of these days....

So the net gain in elevation (from muzzle to the top of a 10ft added burm) in the red/south shooting line would be about 17ft. If I dug/scraped a strip of ground (to use as the burm), to a level, would that not be sufficient?

Maybe the yellow/west direction would be the best, despite the sun in the late evening.

Thanks for the help.

Shooting uphill towards your house is asking for trouble

About 15 years ago, I worked with a team to rebuild a 600 yard rifle range in South Texas. We had access to an NRA range design book, and did our best to follow the guidelines presented in it.

Though not the book we used for our design criteria, the following publication is very similar in its guidelines. You might be surprised at how tall berms should be and how much range behind the berms should be considered to be impact area and ricochet area.

Range Design Criteria, US DOE publication

Man thanks everyone. Good stuff here. OB never disappoints!
I'm thinking if I move the tower/blind due north about 100 yards, it would set things up nicely with the total drop of nearly 25 feet to the last target.

I like the idea in general.

I don't like shooting past your neighbors structures across the street. Guessing they'll be able to hear a ballistic crack going past.

Same with shooting at the road.

Definitely rent or hire a dozer for any 10ft berm.

Definitely get some life sized steel deer targets made.

I modeled what the red line range would look like based on the current design and uploaded the simulation to YouTube:

Thanks @CS78!

Haha @Picard! I needed that humor to put things in perspective!

Beyond the safety issues mentioned and direction recommendations (all good considerations), since the range will be up to 500 - 600 yards long I have to assume precision shooting will be a main objective. However I must say that shooting from a 13' high platform typically will not be conducive to precision shots - unless the platform is Extremely Sturdy built. Also for me, logistic wise, I would rather shoot long range from a prone position or seated bench. I would also prefer the shooting position to be close to the house and shoot away from there.

Mark Thompson's range in Utah: the shoot house was an old cargo truck box set on the ground. Custom / carpeted benches inside. Go inside, roll up the back door and there is the range. In this instance, it was steel plates about to 1000 yards. Worked well for his shooting school.

Oh, and no tracers! I watched a guy light up the 600 yard berm at ASC in Houston with 50BMG tracers. He thought he was going to pack up and go but he got boxed in by some fed up fellow shooters prior to HFD arriving.

HuntingGMan said:

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About 15 years ago, I worked with a team to rebuild a 600 yard rifle range in South Texas. We had access to an NRA range design book, and did our best to follow the guidelines presented in it.

Though not the book we used for our design criteria, the following publication is very similar in its guidelines. You might be surprised at how tall berms should be and how much range behind the berms should be considered to be impact area and ricochet area.

Range Design Criteria, US DOE publication

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This.

Looks like the line to your west is your best bet. Looks like you would be shooting downhill into a creek bed. The creek bed should make a good gradual backstop. Plus you own quite a bit of land past the creek bed for possible bullet impact area.

We do something similar at our place but we do not shoot out of a tower.

I agree with the commenters about shooting toward the house. Also, consider putting in a little tactical range in the trees somewhere and get in some pistol practice. Might be fun to shoot over and around baricades/obstacles at relatively close targets.