I grew up in the Texas Panhandle town of Dimmitt in Castro County.longtooth wrote:When I was a kid in the West Texas town of Lubbock (yes flint I grew up there but left as soon as I got out of High School) you could not shoot at the dump but every farmer that had a clechie pit would let anyone that wanted to shoot for the asking. By the time I was an older teen they started putting an "Honest box" out & asked for $2.00 - $5.00 to shoot. Probably could not beg or buy into one out there any more.
We went to the dump and shot, a regular plethora of targets; cans, tires, cars, bottles--you name it it was there. We'd shoot our handguns there... mainly .22's and .38's.
Other times we'd take our .22 rifles out to the clechie pit 6 mi. east and 6 mi. north. Nobody ever, ever out there. We'd go out on a Sunday afternoon and spend two, three hours just plinking at rocks, bottles, cans.
I'd love to do that again.
That was in the '60's.
Fast fwd to the '80's and we built our own backstop at our farm out of 3/8" steel that was 8 foot wide and 6 foot tall. We welded legs at the top of the sheet so that it would lean at about a 45 degree angle and the bullets would then be forced into the dirt.
It worked great, as long as you could hit the side of a barn!
Then we moved to Ft. Worth.
Those days were gone.
But now, my daughter loves guns and she and her husband now own a ranch between McKinney and Greenville that has some very natural backstops--and they both love to shoot.
Happy days are back again, as we can now--once again go out and plink!
Russ