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.

The range isn't the issue, its the impact fan zone thats a HUGE safety issue. I have a bulldozed berm on our property line... but should one ever stray....lucky there isnt' much there save a hay barn and cattle mostly.

We have 100 acres, I can get 1000 out of that the way it sits. And that range could be... guessing, about 500 yards wide too...

From surveying my old boss always said, acre is 208x208 basically.

That's why I like living here in so. Idaho. I can drive 7 miles to BLM land, set up a bench, and shoot 40 miles across BLM land to the NV border. Across the border, there's a whole lot more of it. It's not as handy as shooting out the back door, but it's very cheap.

Order a copy of "The NRA Range Manual",......it's ALL there, and the veracity is such that it IS the Manual Adopted by Arizona Dept. of Game and Fish for ALL State and Private Commercial Ranges.

Do you know how to spell "Impact Area"?

What it REALLY means?

Safe "10* FIRE FANS" ?

Before anybody goes all 'Typical Crossfire" I've BUILT more then a couple,....and none of it gets easier.

The "Length" of a 800 yd range may well be 5-10 times more then the ACTUAL course,.....

Question A. .........What calibers (800 yd calls out LARGE and fast)

Question B. ........'Fire fans' ,.....vertical, horizontal, lateral, and tangental.

GTC

To all that replied. Thanks. I think I got it now. I think.

If you have a specific area you are looking at, this site will measure acreage you outline using Google maps and satellite views.

http://acme.com/planimeter/

At least in my area, Google maps now shows property lines in rural areas. You can trace the outline of a property and see the acreage.

Bruce

Maybe a deserted spagehtti factory?
Or a Montana Dental Floss farm?

LOL sorry I wish I had 800 yds to play on again.

That's a good site. Thanks for posting.

Sections of ground vary in size. They are not an exact one mile by one mile. miles

FIre fan or what I call impact zone is what kills it. If its private for your own use, IMHO there is a hair bit less issue, with a good impact berm, if its for others use or especially open to the public... you better cross Ts and dot I's..... And a guy here did an idiot thing and built a 1000 yard one wiht a county road RIGHT next to it, regardless of suggestions not to.... I'd say at some point it'll be closed.

Some of the Garmin GPS offer an area function; basically you walk the boundries and once your back at the start, the GPS calculates the enclosed acreage..

Not so in the flat lands.
A section of ground means exactly that. 1 Square mile. 640 ac.

Pretty flat here. We raise lots of rice. What do they do about the problem of putting a square piece of property on a round surface, where you live? I have surveyed a long time and things aren't always what they are supposed to be. miles

Perfect!!! Oh yeah!

Might run into issues on days with a cross wind though.

Never seen a perfect section, and have seen lots of them. Flat, steep, rolling, brush, clear..... never seen a perfect one.

In theory they are supposed to be 1 square mile and exactly 640 ac. but that is only theory.....

There is only two reasons that a section would be perfect, someone [bleep] up or someone is lying.

An 800-yard range requires more than 800 yards in a usable straight line.

You must add to that 800 yards from muzzle to target some more distance behind the muzzle and beyond the target. How much room depends on what you have to have in those two areas � shooting bench, back-stop, etc.

OK. One. A rod by a half mile. 40 yards for backstop and 40 yards to park and set up. if you are missing the target by more than 8.25 feet either way it may be time to shoot at shorter range, which this permits. ;-{>

Don't know where you're from, but I think you'd be surprised.
There's vast areas in Nebraska where the roads are all neatly and lovingly placed in one mile increments, both directions. Sure, there's oddities along the way, such as correction lines at county borders and where drainages cut through, but one mile by one mile "sections" of land are monotonously common. Between this and adjacent states there's literally millions of them.

Southern Idaho is laid out the same way in the populated areas. There are corrections every so many townships to allow for earth curvature, of course.

How wide do you want it?

An acre is 43,560 sf or so.

Where does one find a parcel of land on the sale black 50 yards wide by 800 yards long anyways?

Boy Oh Boy!! Our schools ain't doin very well!!

I'd hate to have to watch you guys try to figure out miles per gallon!

I cant believe the number of responses....

How many grapes does it take to make a grapefruit?

Yep. It's most everywhere. Everywhere the lay of the land allows it, anyway.
It's evident in cities this mile by mile plan has been in place for a very long time. The major streets are at mile increments, 12 city blocks to a mile. It's the same as the number of inches in a foot. How many cities have you seen laid out this way? 12th street, 24th, 36th, 48th, 60th, etc. It gets altered every time there' a correction line of course, but other than that.... These were once the only roads in the area, just like out in the country. Now they're where the major intersections are, and the stop lights that you wait the longest at...

This is the way it's been for a long time and there's no turning back now...

I'm sure, in a sense, Heavywalker is right about the absolute perfection of it all. Those durned surveyors were off a few feet here and there, running around driving all their little stakes and sticking their pretty pink flags in the ground. But all in all they done pretty good considering what they had to work with when they first started. They've been at it, what, a couple hundred years, nearing 250?
It is what it is.
And it's pretty darn close. Surprisingly so if you stop and think about it.

The town of Twin Falls, ID follows suit, except....inside the central section of town is the old part of the city. Back when it was platted, the IDIOT who laid it out came up with this 'ingenious' idea of giving every house more sunlight by turning all the streets 45 degrees from north-south. So, every street comes into the bordering section line streets at a 45 degree angle. Navigating in this town is a nightmare. If the designer was still alive, he'd be lynched daily.

Plus......your target and target stand would be 1"wide and 25-30 feet tall.
If flat country.......visualize the berm........

I expect back in the early days those pretty pink flags were not to common. I do agree that the general idea was to have townships six miles square with thirty-six perfect sections but did you ever try to put something like that on the ground. I think if you actually measure those square mile sections that are talked about you will find them lacking a little here and there. I do think that with what they had to work with and the conditions that went along with it, they did a pretty good job, but not anywhere near perfect. miles

I'm sure you're right, Miles.
Close enough

Rock Chuck. I've seen towns and cities with that diagonal mess built in. 5 and 6 (and more) way intersections. Ornery pranksters! lol

Then there's places like Sioux City IA? Sheesh, what a nightmare.

Topography is a big factor, for instance I have 200 acres but because of the lay of the land the longest I can get is just under 500 yards. No neighbors, roads, or fire fans to worry about.

Question on the lead thing; If I sell the property "as is" and carry the loan with no bank involved would I have a problem?

Unless some gov inspector is going to be out there scratching around or you nor the buyer "alert the media" I'd say you're good to go, Spano.

Probably whoever buys it would want to keep all the ranges and you can be sure I'm going to try to fly under the radar on this.

You are going to want a hill as a backstop so you won't have to worry about where the bullets end up.

I have drawn a quick sketch. If i done it correctly it will be attached as a jpeg. I hope this helps.

The funniest answers,are from the guys that are always so quick to point out how smart they are.

Where are you going to find a parcel that fits your requirements?