My Shooting Cabin

[vtmarmot]

I have always enjoyed Dick Wright's tales of his hunting blind out back. I thought having something like that of my own would be great. Last fall I finally moved into a house where that was possible. I have 5 acres with the house, and there are hundreds of acres of undeveloped land beyond that. There are plenty of deer, plus bears, coyotes, squirrels, porcupines, fishers, red and gray foxes, grouse and woodcock.

I wanted something at least 8 by 10 with a 6 by 8 porch. I priced out the materials to do it all myself but decided the effort was too great. I ended up having Home Depot deliver an 8 by 10 shed which they assembled on site in a couple of hours. I painted it and put in windows on three sides. I built a porch with a synthetic deck and metal roof. I had previously had the area graded and crushed stone put down, and I had shooting berms at 40 and 80 yards. The whole thing came out to about 3 grand.

I made a suppressor out of two plastic 55 gallon drums and fiberglass insulation to keep from bothering the neighbors too much. The range slopes downhill, so I had to be creative about how to support it.

I have used it for several shooting sessions, and I was able to take a nice doe from it while sitting in a rolling office chair. I haven't given up tramping through the woods, but this is a nice option.

 

[alinwa]

Too friggin' cool......

I'ma' just say this once, please take it as intended (I'm a father, my youngest is 10yrs old)

I made a suppressor like that once and one night had a dream that I was shooting through it and a neighbor kid ran through my scope chasing his dog.

It wasn't real

It DID NOT happen.....

But I couldn't get the picture out of my mind so I took mine down, saying that if I ever do one again I'll make sure that the first 20-50ft are at least 7ft off the ground. Looks like you _could_ dig yours down a little with a backhoe/cat so I thought I'd just mention it. I've had home-ranges on several 5acre properties and 7 friends/family members have exactly that so I love the idea but since we all have neighbors I just like to mention that if you cut down your field of view you might think about either running some chain-link out to where you can see it, or setting the ground low enough.

 

[Hunter]

I made a suppressor like that once and one night had a dream that I was shooting through it and a neighbor kid ran through my scope chasing his dog.

Interesting story -- and advice.

 

[vtmarmot]

Good advice, thanks. The area is liberally posted as a shooting area and it's surrounded by stone walls, but I'll take another look at other precautions.

 

[alinwa]

My current range is on the end of a mile-long completely private drive and is not only posted with "No Trespassing" but has two gates and a large sign "WARNING, You Are Entering a 24hr LIVE FIRE Shooting Range!!" yet one day I went out, set up to shoot and heard rigs down range...... drove out on the tractor to find 5 local rednecks with a couple trucks buried to the hubs behind my shooting berm.....

I won't go into details but suffice to say, "it went downhill from there..."