Actually have the local sheriff race being decided today. We know both these canidates better than current sheriff, so that should help. Just getting some suggestions, we will try everything we can to make it safer. I like the idea of the range, it has cut down on tresspassers on our place shooting up signs and leaving trash. The guy that heads up iur lease is supposed to go out there with a sheriff buddy of his. Hopefully we are making some progress. Thanks for all the input..
Most particularly if it is a public range, ricochets and stray rounds missing the berm are going to be a fact of life. If you hunt early on weekday mornings, the danger will be minimized. (And the hunting should be better.)
If it were me, I would be talking to a few people about maintaining the place as a private range, perhaps associated with the local gun club. This in itself would reduce the number of rounds straying over the berm significantly. As long as it is a public range, there will be issues. Operating it as a private range will also remove some of the financial uncertainty for the range owners, cutting way down on the operating and maintenance costs. With a private range, the members police the range in order to protect their investment, and so it is seldom if ever necessary to pay somebody to camp out there all day.
Note that in a public range, a ya-hoo acting stupid only risks his admission fee for the day if he manages to get himself booted out. With a private range, said ya-hoo would be risking his much higher annual fee, and his access for a very long time. People operating a private range tend to have a long memory about issues like that.
I used to shoot at the Elm Fork public range in Dallas, many years ago. Some years later I joined a gun club that had a private range, and the difference was like night and day. - I'll never shoot at a public range again, I can tell you that much.
Good luck, and do not neglect to offer a day of hunting as your guest to the next deputy who tells you how safe it is out there on your lease. His reaction to the offer should be interesting and who knows? - Maybe he'll take you up on the invitation and come around to your way of thinking after hearing a few rounds whiz overhead.