Letter Re: “Range, Range in the Home”

Sir,
I would expect that most readers of SurvivalBlog either are good marksmen already, or desire to be better marksmen. I consider myself to belong to the latter group with skills that place me, at best, in the very modest middle of that category. As the prices of ammunition and reloading components increased during this past year my visits to the range became fewer and fewer while my skills languished accordingly. This is not good for someone who hopes to be better prepared to put meat on the table, or to defend oneself.

Not long ago my younger brother was hampered by the rising cost of regular practice at his local range, decided to try a bit different means of honing his marksmanship skills: indoor target practice using his pellet rifle and pellet pistol. I know that this is probably not a new concept to many SurvivalBlog readers, but I had never given much consideration to it until my brother began emailing me photos of his ever improving groups.

I decided that he must be onto something and that I would give it a try as well. I established an unobstructed lane in my basement from one wall, through a doorway to my garage, to the outside garage wall. This gave me just over ten useable yards–not a long range, but plenty long enough to practice the basics and fundamentals of shooting with pellet rifle and pellet pistol. Whether a target is 30 feet away or 500 yards away, you still need to concentrate on such things as steady position, sight picture, breathing, and all the other elements of marksmanship that result in making the projectile go where you intend it to go.
In the weeks since I began using my little range-in-the-home I am very pleased with the steady progress I have been making. I’m a long way from striking fear into the hearts of the competitors at Camp Perry, but the local game animal population may have greater cause for concern. With the cost of pellets being negligible compared to the cost of rifle and pistol ammunition I can now shoot many, many more times per session and thereby more readily discover and correct shooting errors than I could have otherwise.

A few bits of cautionary advice might be helpful to readers who may want to try this method. Do not underestimate the power of a pellet rifle or pistol. They can be lethal. The pellets can easily tear through a layer of plywood with enough energy left over to damage the mortar in a block wall (don’t ask how I know this), so be sure you have a backstop that can safely stop the pellets without ricochets which are also dangerous. Also, I have chosen to wear a thin nitrile glove, such as mechanics sometimes wear, on my right hand as a precaution against absorbing lead from the pellets I am handling. I don’t know if this is necessary, but I handle quite a few pellets during a session, so I figure it can’t hurt to take that added step.

A range-in-the-home can never fully substitute for practice with “real” firearms at a “real” shooting range, of course, but it can certainly help you to sharpen or maintain your skills when the weather, or the cost of ammunition is frightful. – Daniel M.