Anyone here from Columbia, MO ?

I'm just a few hours drive from Columbia. I've only been there once....sorry. It's a college town. It can't be that much of college town, as he could go down to Midway USA and rub shoulders with Larry Potterfield. Also, its Columbia is just a couple stone's throws away from Mexico Missouri, which is where Grafs & Sons is. I'm jealous...

Bill.

Columbia isn't a bad town. It's a college town, but still has a lot of old rustic feel too it in places. Good pubs.

As far as guns, OC is legal, and if you have a CC permit, go for it. You just of course always have to be careful not to carry on Campus or any University owned property.

It's not perfect, but it's a fun town.


EDIT: Oh, and buy some Tigers stuff, or people might outcast you.

Too bad Ray Chapman passed on a couple of years back. Check out this link if ya want to...

http://gvshoot.com/doku.php

I lived in Columbia, MO for 3 and a half years. It is the coolest city I've ever lived in. It can be a lot of things to a lot of people. Great nightlife and music. Good food. College town atmosphere. But also lots of rural countryside. The city is more liberal than not, but it isn't particularly anti-gun. MidwayUSA is headquartered there. So is CMMG.

You can go to the shooting range in the morning, stop and get some Shakespeare's Pizza for lunch, head to the Mizzou football game in the afternoon, and eat dinner at Les Bourgeois Vinyard on top of a bluff overlooking the Mighty Mo.

Have you friend go to the Missouri Dept of Conservations website http://www.mdc.mo.gov/ ON the left he will see a box with Quick Links inside the site and have him click on "Conservation Areas" and then try MDC Region and then Central he should be able to find a few places not too far away that he can hunt at which are Conservation owned and some even have Free to shoot on Unmanned ranges and there are also some with organized Pay ranges with Target throwers for shot gunners and fixed range targets so he knows what range he is shooting at etc.

If he calls a Conservation office they also have a free Map that lists all the places to hunt that they own plus other things like Boat ramps for use of many rivers etc. The map is Called Missouri Outdoors .

O and BTW when he is on the Website and after looking over any Department areas there he can also print out a map of how to get there combined with a Topo Map of the area and look over what the areas main uses are with a projection of the prospects of success " say for Deer hunting it may be considered a poor area for that yet great for Turkey hunting , or it may have a Field Archery range on it , or a boat ramp etc."

Great town! A mixture of college town liberal and conservative, with the libs winning most offices. Yet the town is full of shooters and hunters. Midway is on the west edge of town, Bass Pro on the north edge, Grafs a few miles north, good ranges, a great gun club, several conservation areas close, and 13 thousand acres of national forest southeast of town. Deer and turkery are VERY abundant. Shopping, eating, music, and culture is everywhere. Your friend will enjoy his stay in Columbia a great deal. He may never leave.

Oh, BTW. Try Wise Guys pizza. It was a fluke that I had it, but they have stuffed crust Chicago style pizza...it may be the best thing I've ever eaten.

good gun club there

As someone mentioned, the Mo Dept. of Conservation is a great resource for finding a place to hunt. I've found that you have to be selective of the state areas you hunt right around Columbia, some of them can get crowded.

As far as shooting goes, Target Masters is a good indoor range where I take the wife occasionally. North of town a few miles at Finger Lakes state park, the Conservation Dept. has a nice outdoor shooting range. It is unmanned and I try to avoid it on the weekends. (I don't like to be around a lot of people I don't know who are handling firearms). Someone mentioned the Chapman Academy, which requires a membership. I spent a few days attendeding the Bianchi Cup which was held there last year, and it's a nice facility. If he's into clays, just east of town a ways is Prarie Grove. I've never shot there, but they let the county 4-H kids practice there for free and so I've been out there several times with my daughter.

Overall, it's a great town with lots to offer. He'll like it.

I went to college 25 miles from there in Fulton. We used to go to Columbia to party. It was a fun town. I went back a few years ago while at a college reunion. Seems pretty much the same only more so.

I certainly wouldn't mind living in Columbia.

BTW - You can't actually go "to" Midway. On the other hand Graf and Sons has a storefront. They're not that far from Columbia. I first bought reloading supplies from them in 1980.

i live just south in nw arkansas i live right next to eurka springs

It can get humid in Columbia, but the temperature rarely reaches 100. Still uncomfortable in July and August.

It can get humid in Columbia, but the temperature rarely reaches 100. Still uncomfortable in July and August.

Click to expand...

Quite true of the entire state but if you have paid attention for almost the last 10 years even if we get a heat wave in summer it seems that after 2-3 of sweltering temps some cool front seems to come down out of Canada and give us a break of a week or so and then back we go to the hot house .

Mmmm, Shakespeare's Pizza alone makes Columbia worth it! I lived 15 minutes away from Columbia for 4 years and can assure you that Mid MO has plenty of Pro Gun folks to cancel out the antis.

My only real gripe about Columbia is is it's a 75,000 person city with 100,000 people living in it. It's hard to explain, but if you go there and see the way it's laid out, the way the roads are, and a couple other things there are just more people than the infrastructure was meant for.

Also the point that it is a college town with a large university, it's full of too many young people that are in too much of a hurry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm 24 and just got out of college, but there's just something about columbia that doesn't work for me.

Any University with its own nuclear reactor can't be all bad.

Got caught in a tornado in Columbia once.
Whitman Air Force base is close so there are a lot of military personnel.
Overall it seemed to be pretty nice.