Unusual Range Report-Fire Danger

[LDSILLS]

I was seriously going to work on load development yesterday at my range. But after talking to my cousin and my friend the conclusion is its just not a good time. At my 1,000 range that sits aside fields of corn and pasture conditions are extremely dry.

In fact my cousin had a slight fire in the combine when some dust got on the exhaust manifold while cleaning the air cleaner. He stepped away for just a minute or so and a small fire started near the engine. He managed to brush it off. The problem was a few minutes later he saw smoke in a bean field near my range about 900 yards away. All he could determine was an ember from the small combine fire flew from the farm yard and caught the beans on fire. The got them out quickly after an area about the size of two pickups burned. Luckily on the back of their YTV was a 20 gallon sprayer filled with water/herbicide for spraying fence row weeds and that allowed them to douse the fire.

My friend had a neighbor who's building and $1,000,000,000.00 worth of ag equipment was lost. Evidently they were bailing corn stalks and had a hot bearing on the bailer they didn't notice. That bearing caught some chaff on fire and thats all she wrote.

Can a hot bullet or case catch a field on fire? Probably not! But why taking a chance! Second and allot of people dont think about it is, driving across dry grass with a vehicle or parking. That vehicular catalytic converter can easily get dry grass smoldering and all it takes is a gust of wind to start flames.

What caused the extreme dryness...5-6 weeks ago was our last rain. Prior to that rain was 2-3 weeks of no rain. Plus extreme low humidity for us...what should be in the 60=80% range for fall is days where it tops in the high 30%.

Unless we get rain my range shooting is on hold folks.

[charlie b]

Military ranges we had to monitor fire conditions a lot. Many times we banned the use of tracers or incendiary rounds. But, we never had a fire from shooting ball ammo at regular targets. One exception I remember was when we were shooting armor piercing at old tank hulls. The weeds had grown around the targets and the sparks from the impact of the rounds against the steel ignited the weeds.

If the area in front of your shooting bench is cleared out a ways I would continue shooting. If not, then putting a hold on things is a good idea.

[PhilC]

Good thing to think about and take necessary precautions. I've asked myself that question a lot this year, but since I'm almost exclusively shooting cast, I don't let it bother me when conditions are comfortable enough to set my bench up.

[Mcrider55]

About 10 years ago, a very busy public range near Des Moines, Iowa had to close down due to a fire caused by someone shooting tracers. The backstop used old railroad timbers and that was all it took. The real problem came when during the rebuild, the EPA got involved due to decades worth of lead bullets being buried in the ground. What was initially thought to be a quick, minor repair turned into nightmare. The range was closed for a few years to upgrade the range.

[charlie b]

Good thing to think about and take necessary precautions. I've asked myself that question a lot this year, but since I'm almost exclusively shooting cast, I don't let it bother me when conditions are comfortable enough to set my bench up.

Remember that some cast loads eject a lot of unburned powder. Black powder and substitutes are also big problems when there is grass near the firing line.