Not Starting Fires with Tracers

[Beretta686]

I'm hosting a small machine-gun shoot for some friends down at my Ranch next month and I'm looking at bringing some tracer rounds with me.

However, I'm a bit worried about the fire hazard of them. In the Army, I can't count the number of times we started brush fires on weapon ranges due to tracer rounds. Is there a safe way to shoot them and mitigate the fire hazard?

I'm looking at firing into a stockpond, but the terrain means I'll only be able to get about 200 meters away when the tracer burn starts 75-100 meters out. So I'd rather fire at my normal firing point which offers about 500 meters, but behind it is a woodline.

I figure not there's not much of a way to mitigate the hazards, but maybe someone has thought of something I haven't.

[Old Stony]

A friend and i went through the fire problem once at a range with a tracer. It only took one to end up with a helicopter dropping water and all kinds of insanity. We didn't know there was a tracer in our ammo, but he had loaded some pulled military bullets with plinker loads in 30/06. My only advice is be overly cautious with them.

[Ibmikey]

I must confess to being the reloader of the tracer from a batch of GI pulled bullets. I am not however the one who fired the shot (notice shift of blame) and caused a bull dozer, helicopter, prison fire crew etc to visit us that day. Thought I was going to have to trade my 55Chev PU to the fire crew to get out of there!

[Mobuck]

Don't even consider using the "stock tank" as a catch basin. I only use tracers on my 300 meter range where there's a large hill directly behind the target butt with a double row of RR ties to catch any skips or wild shots. The rest of the bullets go straight into the dirt about 4' behind the target holder. Even then, I've set the RR ties on fire a couple of times when tracers embedded in them and continued to sizzle.
FWIW, Tracers aren't much fun unless you're shooting 300 yards or more.

[Beretta686]

Yeah, shooting them at 200 meters doesn't really sound like much fun. I guess I'll save them until after it's rained and then let loose.

[HiBC]

Thanks for thinking!!

The way it gets played,the anti-gun forces look for anything,ANYTHING,they can use for negative PR,then they run it nation wide with commentary,then some group begins lobbying before Congress.

A wildfire caused by shooters ,especially machine guns and tracers,is low hanging ripe fruit.

Making good choices is one of the most powerful tools to take care of the 2A

[wogpotter]

Find a big swamp maybe?

[tahunua001]

there is... only fire them in the rain or when there's a foot of snow on the ground... the latter isn't exactly an option in texas but the former may be, see if you can schedule it just following a good soaking.


oh and always have shovels, and water handy.

[ttarp]

Yeah, about the stock tank idea. After watching a tracer ricochet off the water and up over the treeline to who knows where, we decided it wasn't such a good idea.

[4V50 Gary]

Have your own pumper firetruck. Fires happen with tracers.

[skizzums]

I pulled my groin running down a 200 yard hill to stomp out the brush fire my .223 started. I had loaded up a thousand because I got such a good deal, so I have to use them. we just use them after the rain now, no problems.

[chris in va]

You guys should have seen the hill fire at the Knob Creek MG shoot a couple years ago. It looked...unearthly.

[Jim567]

In 76 Ft Carson night fire.
I would wait just a bit till the other guys caught the sage brush on fire with tracers. I could see the targets better and better my score lol.

[baddarryl]

Thanks for thinking!!

The way it gets played,the anti-gun forces look for anything,ANYTHING,they can use for negative PR,then they run it nation wide with commentary,then some group begins lobbying before Congress.

A wildfire caused by shooters ,especially machine guns and tracers,is low hanging ripe fruit.

Making good choices is one of the most powerful tools to take care of the 2A

Best post of the year!

[SVTCobra306]

You could also shoot at extreme distance, past tracer burnout.. you would still have to be prepared to react to rounds that fall short, or ignited jackets that separate and go wild.

[medalguy]

Shooting into a bank of sand works really well. I used to have access to a sand pit where the back wall was about 150 yards out and an almost vertical wall. We shot thousands of tracer rounds out of both .30 and .50 BMG and never had a single ricochet or errant tracer round. And no fires either.

Boy I sure miss that sand pit. The sand company went out of business and sold the pit and it was turned into a landfill.

[Double Naught Spy]

Mow/scalp the area between you and the targets, around the targets, and behind the targets. Then disc in the clippings. This will HUGELY reduce fire risk.

While you may not have your own pumper truck, you can have a few shovels and a couple 5 gallon hand pump water sprayers.

You may not have your own pumper firetruck, but offer your local VFD to bring a brush truck out to watch the fun and collect donations for them.

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Reducing the fire risk is your first step to preventing a catastrophe. Second is being able to respond to a fire quickly. Stopping a small fire (small because of lack of fuel, lack of ability to spread rapidly, lack of time to grow) is much easier than stopping a fire that has grown large.