Tips for setting up field in woods

[Falcon16]

As others have mentioned try and use the natural terrain as bunkers if you can it saves money and time and such. If you can get things like pallets,spools etc for free or very low cost they make excellent bunkers. I also highly agree with the idea of getting people out to play then seeing if they'll come help build the field as well. My home field (now sadly closed) used to have build/cleanup days. We'd all head out there and clean up the field and build some new bunkers or design new field layouts etc. When it was all said and done bonfire with pizza and some beer.

+1 for having at least some water available so people aren't dying or if someone runs out of their own.

I also am in support of trying to keep plastic etc out of nature so I'd definitely have a recycling bin for spent 12g and a garbage can for everything else. I'd also enforce using dump pouches for spent 12g as well.

I'd also look to marking the boundaries of your land, especially when you're actively playing so that no bystanders wander in, last thing you need is a lawsuit because someone hiking around got blasted because they walked down the wrong path for example. I used to play outlaw with some friends in the woods behind their home and we'd let all the neighbors know we were playing so to not go back there for a while, we also got yellow caution tape and would string it around the edges so it was obvious we were in there. Seemed to work out well

[DavidBoren]

Do NOT play at your local dump. Lol.

Fun story about outlaw ball from back in ~2003... two of my friends, my older brother, and I were playing some paintball in the woods near the city dump. I say city, but Troy has a population of 1000 people... village dump doesn't sound right, though.

ANYWAYS, we are taking a little break, filling hoppers, drinking water... and we notice a silver Dodge Ram tear-assing into the dump with one of those magnetic red flashing lights on top like a 1960's cop show. And behind it is a cop car with the disco lights on. And another, and another...

They rush up to us, the Dodge Ram skidded to a halt sideways to provide cover as the cop cars start parking in their usual semicircle... doors open, guns drawn, all of them pointing at us..

The owner of the dump had called the cops saying terrorist were training at the dump with gas masks and fully automatic weapons... we didn't even have fully automatic markers. Lol. We had a 98c, a Stingray, a Spyder Aggressor, and a 32* Rebel, but that's irrelevant.

Well, we explain to the cops that we actually aren't terrorist in training... but instead just some boys playing paintball, sorry to disappoint all you commandos.

The best part, Troy had this crazy one-armed police chief, named Hook (not his actual name, but it's what we called him because of his prosthetic arm)... he always bragged about having a 50cal sniper rifle, so we asked him if he was scoping a bunch of kids with his 50cal. For one, something about knowing that you were being aimed at by an antimaterial rifle is somehow cool to a kid. Secondly, we wanted to make fun of him for being a big man aiming his antimaterial rifle at children.

He says he had his M1A out that day, but it would have done the job. I yelled in his face that WE WERE THE JOB, freaking @$$hole. Children were "the job".

Hook had a guillie suit on and everything... even had little camo sleeves for his hooks!!! And a combat knife on the same hip as his hook hand... maybe it attaches?

Every available cop within 80 miles shown up to point guns at us that day. Don't play at the dump...

[punkncat]

^ Had a VERY similar experience years back. We were playing on a water company pipeline. We knew a high up guy with the water authority and he gave us "permission" as it were to play there. There was a center section that mowers and tractors would come down a few times a year and he asked us to have all that rolled/moved out of the way or they would get destroyed, hauled off, and we wouldn't be able to play there.
Fast forward, we had been playing there off and on for about a year. VERY strict about everyone taking all their trash out of the woods, were parking well down the street at a friends and able to use a trail in back of his place to move down to the field without all the neighbors seeing us. Had done some really nice improvements and had an awesome place to play.
One afternoon this guy comes out raising hell about us playing in his back yard. Apparently the section of our field right at the "90" came a few feet into his yard. The way the properties were laid out it seemed very unlikely, but essentially he had bought a properly locked parcel down on the water company right of way. (I actually went to the courthouse later to confirm this). This dude was cussing us one side down the other and we smarted off back. Nothing came of it that round, we all left.
The next time we were down playing the Clayton County SWAT team swarmed the woods. The most funny aspect about was when myself and one of the other players saw them...they walked right down the middle of us while still in "creep" stage. We called the game and right about then ~25 camo suited people in masks stand up all around the cops in the middle. They just about shit for just a moment until they realized we were standing down and posed no threat.
Anyway, they told us to pack out and leave and not to trespass. We got a plat that showed he indeed owned the property and the resulting change on the field just ruined play there.

[DavidBoren]

Oh man, that could have been superbad if those cops had reacted differently when you all stood up. Statistically, even if just one gets nervous and pulls the trigger, everyone will start firing. Cops are notorious for groupthink mag-dumps. Glad it worked out the way it did, honestly. Giving up a spot to play, without bloodshed, or fines, isn't so bad.

At the dump, after the cops realized that they weren't going to have a shootout with some terrorists... some visibly relieved, others disappointed... they started dicking with our gear.

One cop shot another cop's boots with the Tippmann 98c. We all made a stink about how they better not say we did it. Lol.

Turned out alright, all things considered. They told us to stop by the station and inform dispatch next time we go play in the woods around town... that way they would know if it was just us they were receiving a call about.

Which isn't a bad idea... stopping by your local police dispatch office and telling them where and when you will be playing. That way, if they get a call about terrorists with fully automatic weapons and gas masks, they know it's actually just a bunch of kids playing paintball.

[punkncat]

To be fair, perhaps it was the lack of social media platforms and such, but I don't recall cop shootings really being a thing when I was a younger person. Perhaps it was due more to a mindset where our first question would have been "Well what did you do?" All in all I have to commend the officers for being super duper cool when they didn't have to be.

[DavidBoren]

An easy way to set the height of bunkers made from underbrush and the branches you chop down, is to tie rope between two trees at the desired height. Then lean branches against the rope to form a short wall/fence. Fill in the gaps with brush and leaves.

It's non-invasive and easy to take down, if needed. And a bundle of cheap rope should make quite a few bunkers.

[MAr]

Make a few boxes from four pallets in strategic places, to shove branches and leaves you cut down into. We spent weeks dragging all of our cuttings to the sides of all the fields we made, could have saved some time and made some convenient bunkers.

[Canuck]

Now you come up with that idea!!!

[MAr]

Haha Scotty wouldn’t have approved! It wasn’t HIS idea!

[KMDPB]

The easiest way is to by sheets of osb. Cut them in half and you have 2 4x4 bunkers easy to make and easy to move. Its hurricane season now so osb is pricey might want to wait till it's down to 10 dollars a sheet. Tires make good bunkers and they are free but you'll never be able to get rid of them so be prepared to have them on the property for ever. The first field we built was all junk, second was all wood. Also get a yong heng compressor.

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[rawbutter]

Be sure to paint the OSB first. Otherwise it will break down within a few years. I've been shot through old OSB bunkers. The bunkers looked fine, but the wood was so soft you could push your finger right through. The paintballs left clean little holes, just like armor-piercing rounds.

[Solmangrundy]

If your like me you have a massive horde of stock class guns because nobody fills HPA/co² anymore.

Plenty of 12grams on the pellet gun isle though.

[Melvin]

If you’re anywhere near a tractor supply store hit them up for pallets, anything that’s not “standard” ends up in the roll off dumpster or snagged by customers for whatever reason. You can get 2-3 free 10’ treated 2x4s off the dog kennel pallets.

[BrickHaus]

I used to have a nice outlaw field out in the woods ( its all million dollar houses now) but we found that osb and plywood woesnt last.

Your best bet is stacking up tdead tree branches to make walls. They are natural, decompose well, and hold up longer that osb.

Pallets help, but we would stand a pallet up, and feed branches between the layers to solidfy them.

We would just wait til trees tipped over and chainsaw em into short pieces. Then build.

Make sure you have permission to play and or let the local PD know you are out there. We have had PD come to our field before they could hear us calling games off and calling eachother out before they engaged us so they knew what we were doing.

[Cyberpyr8]

Get inflatable bunkers, they work great! That's what we did during the shutdown.




Only shot the house once really badly but the chicken coop took a few shots. Seriously though, in the woods I have used pallets and they last a few years.

[russc]

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but I have always found that keeping the field small keeps the pace up.

[BrickHaus]

Id also say, using the woods almost always means you arent building a symetrical field. So if you really wanna make it fun you kinda gotta give it balance and flow. I used to stand at every bunker we would build and make sure it has a few good vantage points, a few poor ones, and a few ways to be flanked or flank. That way there was always a move to make. Games went fast and almost always ended on a great timed flank vs a trade out straight on.

Dont put too many bunkers in one area. Make each bunker some work to get to. Cutting trails through some semi thick brush helps a lot. It creates fire breaks, while providing customizable flanking trails. Soft cover should be utilzed if possible.

And most importantly. Make it so the staging area is totally out and away from the playing field. Too many times have I showed up to outlaw games where the staging is essentially picnic table 20 feet off of the first spawn point, and mask rules get loosely followed when its just a few inexpierenced players are in staging.

[Melvin]

I'll try to get some pictures after the rain but I've been working on one at the back end of the property, I went with 150'x75' the "standard" for a 5 man speedball field. I'll be lucky if I can get 3 on 3s going so it's a good size. Half is wooded and half is in an open field with the division running the length of the field. Bunkers will be an old washer/dryer, tires, 55 gallon drums, pallets, logs, maybe an old volkswagen...whatever else is lying around.

EDIT: I should’ve said this earlier but if you can, make your field run north/south so no one is frying their retinas