Shooting in old strip mines

I currently do all my shooting at the sportsmans club here which is only a ten minute drive from my house. It's fine most of the time, but this past summer a few times I would load everything in the truck and my son would be all hyped up to shoot, and on arrival there would be somebody else shooting, or it would be rented for the day, or there would be a competetion going on.


I hear people talking all the time about their "private" shooting area in old strip jobs, but even though some are my friends, nobody offers to let me shoot there too, not that I blame them.

I don't even know where to start to try to get permission to use an old strip job for shooting. I bet nobody even knows who owns some of the older ones. I hesitate to try to contact the offices of any of the big multi-national coal companies because I'm pretty sure the standard answer would be "no trespassing".

Hell, I'd be willing to pay a yearly fee for a place where I can dump mags to my hearts content, shoot big tannerite, etc.

Any suggestions.....other that everybody else wishes for the same thing.

I would venture that all those old strip mines are privately held. In the modern era, you should be able to identify parcels thru Google Earth or some other site. Identifying the owner should be as easy as contacting your county government then to see who pays taxes on the property.

Start searching for owners here
http://www.co.somerset.pa.us/pages/realestatehome.asp

The strip mines next to me in Claridge Pa was a great place to do some shooting, but the Penn Twp police (local Barney Fife's) ran around like the keystone cops and stopped all the shooting at the mines. They claim the shooting makes to much noise and disturbs the wild life and the neighbors that live a mile away from the mines.

Good luck in claiming your space and I hope you don't run into any local PD to ban the shooting because of the noise.

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Originally Posted by Remington788

Start searching for owners here
http://www.co.somerset.pa.us/pages/realestatehome.asp

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Thanks for the link. I'm about done shooting for this year but I'll do some research this winter and see if I can find a place.

If I wasn't so old I'd look harder for ten acres or so of cheap land and build a range for myself. Something that can't be farmed and has no water supply. I've seen a couple places like that for sale in the past year but even then there are neighbors.

Sure is getting harder and harder to really enjoy shooting on a regular basis.

If no signage is posted, and you're at least a mile (or two) from anyone, why not find an abandoned strip mine and go shooting? Set up a target, make sure you've got a good backstop, and clean up after yourself.