Texas: Private Personal Shooting Range

YogiBear

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Aloha,

I understand that under Texas State law, if you own property 50 acres or more, it is legal to have your own Private Shooting range.

So another (personal?) question.

Do you have one? How many yards can you shoot on it?

And what do you do to Not Disturb the neighbors?
 
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I guess I was a lawbreaker, I had my own gun range on only 3 acres. Of course I lived 7 miles from the nearest town. My nearest neighbors were a Deputy Sheriff and other assorted Rednecks. Nobody ever complained about my shooting. I shot large bore magnum handguns off my back porch at 75 yard targets.
 
In Parker County Texas you must own more than 10 acres before you can set up a range. That law was passed just a few years ago.
 
Not from Texas, but I have two personal ranges. One about 200 ft down my driveway for handguns and one up in the woods for rifle. It's walkable, but easier to drive.

The rifle range (which I don't use often) is more of a cleared path for a 200 yard shot. Nothing fancy, but I have a little covered hut from which I can shoot.

The handgun range allows for a 30 yard shot, and I have various distances marked off on the ground. It's a work in progress, but here it is as it appeared this past fall:

image_zpsdkbao6oj.jpg


I don't have close neighbors (about a mile apart on the road) and live on 200 acres. The folks closest don't mind hearing gun shots... and I don't mind hearing theirs.

I also have a 10 yard shot off my back deck I can use, but only for revolvers. My wife doesn't like spent brass getting caught between the deck boards......
 
And many towns / cities will have no-discharge ordinances, so won't matter how much land you own if you wind up in city limits. That happened to me in Arkansas. What was far out, miles past the boondocks, is now a medical park inside city limits by several miles.

Check pending annexations before you buy land.
 
Never heard of that Texas regulation. Lots of rural West Texans run afoul of the law if that's the case. I suspect that if there is such a law at some level (state or county), it would be enforced only if a neighbor registered a complaint.

I have a range east of Del Rio I shoot at which is not my private property, but it might as well be for shooting purposes. It goes from 25 yards to 485 yards. No close neighbors.
 
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Aloha,

Reason I asked and based on what I have found online from various other forums,

This is what I found on the local county/town level:

Sec. 235.022. AUTHORITY TO REGULATE. To promote the public safety, the commissioners court of a county by order may prohibit or otherwise regulate the discharge of firearms on lots that are 10 acres or smaller and are located in the unincorporated area of the county in a subdivision.

This is the state law I found:

Sec. 229.002. REGULATION OF DISCHARGE OF WEAPON. A municipality may not apply a regulation relating to the discharge of firearms or other weapons in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the municipality or in an area annexed by the municipality after September 1, 1981, if the firearm or other weapon is:
(1) a shotgun, air rifle or pistol, BB gun, or bow and arrow discharged:
(A) on a tract of land of 10 acres or more and more than 150 feet from a residence or occupied building located on another property; and
(B) in a manner not reasonably expected to cause a projectile to cross the boundary of the tract; or
(2) a center fire or rim fire rifle or pistol of any caliber discharged:
(A) on a tract of land of 50 acres or more and more than 300 feet from a residence or occupied building located on another property; and
(B) in a manner not reasonably expected to cause a projectile to cross the boundary of the tract

10 acres for a shotgun, bow, or air rifle and 50 acres for any handgun or rifle

As I have mentioned before, After the Wife retires, we hope to move to Texas Hill Country.

The Wife presently works at the Permitting Dept of local government, she wants to make sure we don't have problems with our range.

Having Our(My) Private shooting range is the last on My Bucket List.

Not being a bother to neighbors is important to us.
 
I think the regulation actually protects operation of a range, so long as it exceeds 10 acres (under which size it may be regulated by a municipality) if the various conditions are met, including the 50 acre size for rifle and handgun use. It doesn't actually mandate a minimum range size.
 
This is what I found on the local county/town level:

Sec. 235.022. AUTHORITY TO REGULATE. To promote the public safety, the commissioners court of a county by order may prohibit or otherwise regulate the discharge of firearms on lots that are 10 acres or smaller and are located in the unincorporated area of the county in a subdivision.

The key here is the word "may", not "shall" or "must". Check with the county you are thinking about moving to.

Good luck!
 
I never bothered to check the regulations here. I have 170 acres and I shoot when ever and where ever I please. Most of my neighbors do the same thing and have places as big or bigger than mine. I have my pistol range, my brother has his, and we share a rifle range that is set up to handle up to 150 yards. We typically sight in for 100 yards as this is wooded country.

But we both shoot off the ranges at times. With hills and heavily timbered and wooded areas for a back stop it is pretty much just use a little common sense.

I have at least one neighbor that has something fully automatic as I hear him working out every so often. I wish I had a silenced .22 but I am not willing to do the paper work and I don't care to mess with the feds unless I have to so I just shoot .22 shorts in a 24" barrel when I want some thing not too noisy.
 
I've had a private range in northeast Texas for 20 years now. With it's orientation on my place I can get up to 400 yard shots. To avoid disturbing the neighbors I don't shoot late at night. That's about it. I have an adequate earth berm behind my targets and the only house less than a mile away is back though some woods over my right shoulder when I'm facing downrange so there is little concern about stray rounds.

I'd go with Zonker5's advice to check the county you are interested in, the proximity to the nearest town of any size, and find out what, if any ETJ that town claims.

I'm quite a distance from the hill country and am not an expert on the area.

....Looking forward to having y'all in Texas.
 
Those quoted sections are from the Texas Government Code, if I remember right. As others have noted, they give county governments the ability to somewhat regulate the discharge of weapons in unincorporated/subdivisions.

It also PROTECTS landowners who have tracts of land that have been annexed by cities. Thanks to this section, we have some areas inside the city limits that it is still available for hunting despite a local ordinance and state law against discharging a weapon inside the city limits. We also have 1 indoor firing range; a rifle/pistol range & a shotgun range inside the city limits. All are protected by this section.
 
This isn't Texas, but back when my dad had a farm in Illinois just outside of town, we used to shoot there frequently. For as bad as Illinois gets dinged for their gun laws, there was nothing preventing someone from shooting on their own land outside the city. I never had any trouble finding places to shoot. I can't say the same for Indiana.
 
This has never crossed my mind. I'm born and raised here and any relative or friend with land outside of city limits were grounds to shoot any gun. My nephew has ~75 acres out west of Ft. Worth with a regulation skeet range. I get to shoot skeet and trap all day, any day, for free :). Well, I do buy targets and ammo ;).

Satellite view of skeet range-
 
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