Any tricks to building a berm other than dump soil

[fitz19d]

Working on securing fill dirt. Not sure if to build decent little berm for my personal use at 100meters and less if I should do anything besides soil. Trying to keep cost down, but would be nice to maybe sink timbers with a backer board for the dirt to be against? Maybe make a base out of tires and fill that over?

[Joe_K]

How large of an area do you want/need as a backstop?

[20X11]

No tricks needed. Nothing stops a bullet quicker or better than dirt.

[TRnCO]

when we built our new house 9 years ago, I had some of the dirt that was dug out for the basement hauled down in my pasture and simply dumped to make my back stops. I did two tandem axle truck loads dumped next to each other at 100, 200, 300, and 400 yards. If it weren't for the cows playing king of the hill on them, they'd probably look about like they did the day they were dumped. BUT now I have to use the loader on my tractor each early fall, when the cows get moved out, to push the dirt back up into a pile.

IOW, if you don't have livestock climbing on the berm, it'll be there for years if all you do is dump it out and leave it, and shoot into it at will.

[ray1970]

Yep. Berms are simple things. They will likely need maintenance over time regardless of how well they?re done initially. I?m not an expert by any means but the larger the berm or the more vertical the catching surface is the better off you?ll be for avoiding potential ricochets.

[whitewalrus]

If you make the berm the correct ratio for the soil, you can use just soil and it will be fine for a while. Using tires, Timbers, etc can help hold the soil if you want to make it less wide but still as tall. Just make sure you keep anything that would be flammable off the impact side to avoid any issues during high fire danger time.


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[Wulf202]

Tire chips work well to hold the soil on the facing side. Tires and railroad ties have issues with causing ricochet on lighter calibers. Tire chips dont.
Seed it as soon as possible with native grasses.

Otherwise pile dirt up

[fitz19d]

How large of an area do you want/need as a backstop?

Well bigger the better, but potentially at least initially just want to be able to line up 2-4 targets and be like 8 foot tall I imagined. Bigger and I figure I need to run drainage (field slopes slightly down to the back where I'd put it. Potentially some day also bring it up the sides a bit so I can maybe do a little bit of an action bay, though much more doubtful I'll have the angles to avoid putting near neighbors in the line of fire, berm or not. Wanted safe direction + berm for extra precaution.