Thread: Shooting range 'silencer'

Originally Posted by whanahuia

Been thinking of doing something similar, given the best spot for a range on my place is right where the animals are.

The range where I usually shoot is on a dairy farm. Not unusual to have milking cows or heifers in the immediately adjacent paddock. The paddock fencing allows animals to get quite close to the butts and if the animals feed into one particular corner you would be shooting over their backs. All the animals ther are now well accustomed to my shooting visits and are not phased in the slightest with any gunfire noise, and I don't use suppressors. In fact, they are quite inquistive and sometime stand at the fence looking at me ( probably hoping I will feed them something ). If thet get down into that fenced corner I have to trot down there to shoo them back to resume shooting. If they are feeding that way as I shoot they do so completely at ease and don't even lift their heads.
On other occasions I've been target shooting on farm with nearby livestock. I always watch how stock reacts to ensure I'm not causing any animal panic and if I saw that wouls immediately stop shooting. Stock new to my shooting have always stood in place, initially watching me for several minutes and when they realise there is no danger just resume feeding as usual.

A few years ago I was on a non dairy farm that bounded onto a dairy unit. I fired a few shost, watched the cows over the fence that behaved exactly as above and had a good shooting session. Talking to the land owner later he aplolgetically said he couldn't let me shoot again. His dairy farm neighbour was a women claiming my shooting had caused mass panic among her herd with cows racing around madly and that her milk production would suffer for the next week. I don't know what her problem was but her claims were complete BS. Once her cows were over the initial curiosity they didn't give a toss about the noise, and I would have stopped if I had seen any cows looking freaked out. I didn't want to stir the pot so let the matter lie.