That being said, I'm pressing some 9x19 tonight sipping bourbon. What all gun stuff is going on with anyone else?
I got a huge hickory shootin' stump out back that's about shot out, after I don't know how much lead has been dumped into it. Saw a '06 ball squirt through the other day, so the backyard range is now restricted to pistols/.22, until I can build a solid backstop. The cheapest thing I can think of is basically what IV8888 uses.
There's some houses a little over a mile away, on past hilly pasture & thick old hardwoods. Cattle & donkeys ain't often in em; but when they are, they're often concealed behind foliage & terrain, but not exactly covered.
My plan is to cut/dig a little trough as close to the taproot as possible, under the main target area, down to a spot for ye' olde' lead smelter (iron skillet).
Then drop an open-ended 55gal drum on top, fill it full of combustibles, and burn it flat with a leaf-blower to kick it up a notch. Most of the copper & lead should collect in the pan.
Someone has been shootin' what was originally a big knot close to the ground for a long time before I started. And until today, there's probably been at least 1k or more rounds of all types planted in the stump. And here I thought oak stumps were tougher as backstops.
As a small rant, I never shoot at live trees; of all things the enviromentalists & conservation types could agree upon, it's that. I've found some healthy, mighty, old trees that fell or died a few years after being shot at during a plinking session, and it's either bugs or rot that finishes the job. And when those trees are next to structures or powerlines?
The most glaring example I can think of, was a massive fir tree next to my best-friend's grandparent's barn. A couple years ago while I was there, some cousins showed up with .22s, and put maybe a couple dozen into a paper target nailed to the trunk.
And when I stopped by this past spring, saw that a tree probably 100yrs old when the barn was built 75yrs ago, had snapped at eyelevel, and taken out said barn.
Lucky for those cousins, is that they're distant enough to get away with it.