Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Acres. Can someone do the math?

Looking to buy enough acreage to build a 800 yard range. Can someone tell me approximately how many acres in a straight line I would have to have to get to this distance? This will also settle an argument. Thanks.

That's 2400 linear feet, minimum. Essentially, you'd need about 2500 linear feet, minimum, by at least the width of a range. That'd be (IMHO) about 25'. 25x2500 = 62,500 square feet.

An acre is 43,560 square feet.

A range 2500' x 25' could be fit onto about 1.4 acres.

Old style measurement for an acre was "seventy paces each way " . I think it's really more like 208 feet .

The answer is going to depend on how much width you need.

Edited to add : I see you ask about acres in a straight line .In that case you need about 12 acres .

You talking square acres? A square acre is roughly 70 paces to the side. Or say @220 feet.

BCR

An acre is about 200' x 200'. I quess it all depends on how wide you want the lot to be. A lot of possibilities if you have someone to sell you land in a specific configuration.

I've always been told an acre is roughly the size of a football field, so assuming you didn't have to worry about your backstop you should be able to do it with a 8-10 acres. that is also dependent on how much frontage your county requires for a building lot and any setback from neighboring buildings that you might need to consider.

When you get it set up can I come play?

In normal sized land parcels, you could fit it on an 80. If you had a normal 40, it wouldn't be long enough, even if you went corner to corner.

If you want bare minimum of land, a strip 10 feet wide and exactly 800 yards long would be .55 acres of land if my math is right.

Now I see what you meant. Yeah, 12 acres like was said before.

Acres are a measurement of square footage. yes 43560 sq feet. A lot of land 208.71 ft X 208.71 ft is an Acre. A lot of land 43560Ft long X 1ft wide would be an Acre. Web

How wide??? One acre is 43,560 sq feet (4,840 sq yards). The math is (5,280 x 5,280)/ 640 - 1 mile x 1 mile divided by 640 acres per square mile.

At 10 yds wide, you would need 800 x 10 = 8,000 sq yds = 72,000 sq ft = 1.65(+) acres. 10 yards wide would be less than optimal for safety reasons and you would need longer than 800 yards for the same reason. I'd try for AT LEAST 100 yards wide and 1,000 yards long, which would be 20.66 (+) acres.

Hope that helps.

Fitting the range into the acreage is one thing. However, most important is enough acreage to contain ricochets which will happen out the left, right and long for sure. That will be wider than the 800 yard long and 4-6x longer.

BH

I always used 70x70 yards as a rule of thumb. Looks like that was pretty accurate.
An 800 yard range is going to require you to buy a lot of land. I've looked at a bunch of different 40 acre tracts recently, and the best I could with any of them would be about around 200-300, safely.

One ONE acre you could have a range over 14,500 yards long ....if it was one inch wide.

I suspect 12 acres is the theoretically correct answer, but in practice, you'd need a lot more once you factor in safety ect..

What about buying a property that joins publice land open to shooting?

Build your benches ect and say the ranges out to say 400 yards on your land, and then place portable targets out on the public land to cover the distances 400 to 800?

Try this site and you can figure out what you want to know.

http://www.onlineconversion.com/

need a mighty accurate rifle to keep your bullet on the property.


not to sound like a jackass lawyer....but, I ran into an issue a few years back where a family had for many years had a skeet range set up on their property. Like, for decades. They also had a rifle and pistol range. Old folks died, kids decided to sell off the place.....had a buyer who wanted to subdivide into half a dozen big parcels. When his lender sent somebody out to do the Phase I environmental inspection, they freaked over all the lead. In order to get the sale financed they had to basically haul away the berm on the range, and remediate the skeet field by taking up the turf and several inches of soil out to the range of a skeet load.

point being, be aware that a dedicated range on your property may cause you an issue when you go to sell it. that's a problem I wish I had....and would certainly put a range in on my own place without a second thought. My kids can worry about the lead when I'm dead.

You can get there by using the following formula:

Take your lane width x lane length and divide by 43560 and this will equal your acres.

20 feet wide x 1000 feet long divide by 43560 will equal .4591368 acres. Adjust to fit. Hope this helps you. Russ

That don't add up.
If it'll fit on an 80 it'll fit on a quarter section.
A quarter is two 80's side by side (160ac).

A quarter section is 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile. 4 of them = a full section of land.
An 80 is half that, 1/4 mile by 1/2 mile or 440 yards by 880 yards.

And don't forget the road running past it. A mile section of land is minus whatever acreage gets eaten up by the road and ditch. You pay taxes to the center of the road.

With half a section of land you could safely build a 1000 yard range so long as there is a hill or something for backstop. 1760 yards by 880.

ETA.
Or on two 80's end to end. 1760 yards by 440.

You're right. I was thinking a 40 was a quarter section! I don't know what my reasoning was on that. I'll fix it.

There are lots of ways to look at it. Here's another one:
800 yds is roughly 1/2 mile (880 yds to be exact). If the land is surveyed in townships and sections, that's 1/2 way across a section. Each yard of width at 1/2 mile long = .182 acres. So, you can pace off, say 10 steps wide, and that will be 1.82 acres. 20 steps wide will, of course, be double that or 3.64 acres.

An acre is 16.5 feet wide and a 1/2 mile long. Another way to visualize an acre is pretty close to the same size as a football field.