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View Poll Results: Are you able to test loads at home?
Yes 49 41.18%
No 70 58.82%
Voters: 119. You may not vote on this poll

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Old February 14, 2011, 01:00 AM   #26
Win_94
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I can shoot at up to 700 yards from my bench at home.
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Old February 14, 2011, 08:17 AM   #27
WESHOOT2
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home, home on the range

I can just stick my gun out any door.....
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Old February 15, 2011, 11:00 AM   #28
jal5
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I wish I could but I have to drive about 20 mins. to our shooting club property. It does hold up the load development process quite a bit. Especially for those calibers I don't shoot routinely.

Joe
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Old February 15, 2011, 12:05 PM   #29
Denny Crane
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About 10 steps from the bench to the door. It's hard to imagine living where I couldn't shoot without driving to a range but I'm sure I would adapt if I had to.
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Old February 15, 2011, 07:46 PM   #30
ipscchef
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I am fortunate

I can step out on either porch and shoot. from my back deck it is 130 yards to my target post,where I can set up about ten paper tartgets and I have a 10" piece of 1" thick boiler plate as my gong. My Bench(I have to build a new one this spring, this one is getting a bit rickety) is 100 yards to the plate, but I can go into the field to the right of the house and get to 300 yards when needed. That reminds me, I have not done any 300 yards shooting in a while.
My friends and I hunt on the property during Deer season.
Load testing is great with a setup like this, load a few, walk out to the chrono, shoot a few, record and go back to the bench.
In addition to all of that, I have a Wife that I truly do not deserve. She acualy ecourages me to go shooting! She is not as avid a shooter as I am, but she is pretty good with my umm, err, HER Mini Fourteen and Model 10.
We may have to get a place closer to town someday as I am pretty gimpy now and it does not look to get any better, but I cannot imagine living somewhere that I cannot shoot shoot form my porch.
I am a very lucky man.
Willy
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Old February 16, 2011, 07:28 PM   #31
ohcnap
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Live and work in a shop located in the country,so I do all my shooting indoors into a bullet trap ,pistols only,the recycling of the lead it's nice also.
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Old February 16, 2011, 08:30 PM   #32
silvercorvette
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One of the dreams I had when I escaped from NY was to move south to a place where I could shoot out my back door. After a lot of looking and planning I realized that to make it happen I would have to live far from shopping and doctors. I am in poor health a getting old so the practically of being close to medical facilities took priority over the connivence of shooting out my back door.
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Old February 16, 2011, 08:51 PM   #33
m&p45acp10+1
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Stuck with living in town. The upside is a five minute drive to work. The range is a 15 minute drive.

Down side is it cost $200 a year for a membership. The good part is I know that in the past year I have probably picked up 5 or 6 times that much in brass alone.
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Old February 16, 2011, 09:40 PM   #34
MOshooter65202
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I live on a farm where and we have a good 300 yard range marked out with a dirt berm for a backstop
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Old February 16, 2011, 09:47 PM   #35
Mike Irwin
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Only if I don't mind my neighbors beating me up.
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Old February 16, 2011, 09:53 PM   #36
scottrussell
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I need to drive about a mile out of town limits....to my deer fields which double as my shooting range
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Old February 16, 2011, 10:06 PM   #37
split toe
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back porch, 20 feet from shop

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Old February 16, 2011, 11:10 PM   #38
NESHOOTER
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No, but I would miss my fellow shooters at our local range as this offers more to my enjoyment to share this sport with my fellow shooters and learn and share with others not only that when someone gets a new baby... the proud parent wants to share it and ponder it with them.
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Old February 17, 2011, 09:55 AM   #39
GP100man
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Range

Here`s a qwik set up in the front yard to test some revolver loads .

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Last edited by GP100man; February 17, 2011 at 09:57 AM. Reason: spelun
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Old February 17, 2011, 10:43 AM   #40
jmorris
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I lived in the city most of my life and testing was limited to function in a bullet trap in the shed or garage. Now I live outside city limits and can shoot in the back yard but am limited to 288 yards.

To save time in the past I just took all of my gear with me and worked up loads on the spot. Very fast.

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Old February 17, 2011, 11:22 AM   #41
Clark
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There was a guy at WSI gun store 10 years ago that told me he had a garbage can half filled with sand. The top half was filled with pieces of foam rubber. He would put a semi auto pistol down into the foam, shoot straight down into the sand, and check the feeding function of the pistol. He said he could do that in an apartment. I have never tried that, but I have shot into the end of a sawed off log, and it makes a great bullet stop.

Once I wanted to test a hot 9mm load. I carved the female impression of the pistol in wood. I put the wood in a military ammo can. I buried the ammo can under ground with the pistol pointing down through a hole in the can. I had a trigger string that came up out of the ground. I pulled the string and heard a "HUFF" sound. I dug it up and the ammo can had bulged to a rounder shape. That must have been when the can was exhaling gas, and then inhaled with the elastic tension of the can. Every part in that pistol had dirt on it. I could barely get the slide back to disassemble it.
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Old February 17, 2011, 01:29 PM   #42
Mike / Tx
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Have to say no at this point in time. However like jmorris and a couple of others, I have portable presses and load it all up and haul it to our farm. There I have a 350yd range that my daughter and I laid out quite a few years ago. It enables year round shooting day or night, (with a couple of lanterns).

Here are a couple of pics...




It won't be too many years longer, and I will hopefully be there to enjoy it all. And yes, then I will be able to shoot off the back porch, like so many of you all can.
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Old February 18, 2011, 09:18 AM   #43
reloader28
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We love to shoot!

I have a pistol range about 10yds out the back door.

I can walk another 20yds to my 50 and 100yd test targets. I have water jugs and wet sand traps for expansion and penetration tests here.

If I want to get serious, about 200yds away from the back door we have a trap range with 3 different clay pigeon throwers.
1 sit-on thrower in the dugout for crossing and away shots.
1 sit-on thrower at the barn loft for high and overhead shots.
1 electic thrower we can do anything we want with.

We also have a 30yd, 22LR spinner game.

A 100yd 1" steel "flipper" target for high power rifle.

Or the long rifle range with 12"x12" steel plates at 400, 600, 800, and 1000yds.

I'm going to make some barracades for the pistol range this summer just to throw in a little something different.

I almost forgot the air rifle and trap that we shoot leaning over the bar in the man-cave when its too dark out or the weather is too bad.


Yah, you could say we love the shooting sports.

Last edited by reloader28; February 18, 2011 at 11:49 PM.
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Old February 18, 2011, 12:28 PM   #44
peter_s
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Quote:
Makes it nice to step from the press and fire a couple out the window.

Kraigwy - this would be my freakin' nirvana...not even having to walk outside, let alone drive 30 minutes to the range!!!
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Old February 19, 2011, 01:43 AM   #45
ipscchef
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Good thread

SilverCorvette,
I am not too far behind you, where we live now may have to turn into our weekend place at some point, for the same reasons you state. We just love where we are now, but due to health problems we will probably be living closer to our Doc's and the hospital in the not too distant future. Our hope is that we can either hold on to our "Farm", if not maybe move back to the Southwest so that we have a short drive to where we can enjoy the outdoors and shoot.
To Mike/Tx, you must be a proud papa!
Jmorris, NICE SETUP GUY!!
Willy
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Old February 19, 2011, 10:04 AM   #46
Jbar4Ranch
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I have a 3+ stage CAS range right off the deck, target butts from 15 yards to 500 yards, which I will stretch to 1000 yards one of these days when I get the time to lase it off and clear a handful of trees, and a couple of clay traps. My shoot house (an old wooden grainery actually) burned in the 15,000 ACRE "Bucksnort" WILDFIRE here in 2000.

Those of you who live in town and have a "ranch" or "farm" several miles away, why on God's Green Earth are you living in the city and commuting?? I can't imagine why or how I could afford a second place in town, get up at 5am, drive all the way out here to seed or harvest fields, put up hay, haul grain to a rail siding, tend cattle, fix fence, or whatever, then drive back into a damn city at 10pm to spend my few precious minutes of down time every day. How do you handle lambing or calving season? Who does the feeding in the wintertime? Do you keep your equipment - tractors, harvesters, tillers, seed drills, swathers, balers, combines, rod weeders, trucks, etc. - at the "farm" or on a lot in the city?
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Old February 20, 2011, 05:35 PM   #47
LOLBELL
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I do country living close to town. I live, hunt, and shoot on the same 115 acres, which is about 15 minutes from a town of about 7,500 folks.
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