ranges
There are NO free, unsupervised ranges in the NY Metro area that I know of.
Calverton was the most unsafe range that I have ever been to. There were times when it was wild. Vans backed up to the firing line and full auto tripod mounted machine guns - which I'm willing to bet were not registered. People firing when others were downrange changing targets.
I stopped using it years ago. Maybe it has changed.
There is a nice facility in Yaphank - Brookhaven Range, IIRC. Trap, Skeet, Sporting Clays, Rifle and Pistol. Open to the Public.
NYC - Richmond Boro Rifle and Pistol - a nice, but private, club underneath the Outerbridge Crossing on Staten Island. A mile or so away is Colonial Rifle and Pistol, also private (the only two hundred yard rifle range in NYC).
There is the Staten Island Sportsman's Club - a Trap range - open to nonmembers at $7 per round. Well, run...a nice facility. They have a website.
There is the Bay Ridge Rod and Gun Club on Ft. Hamilton Pkway in Brooklyn. Used to to be open to the public. Haven't been there in years.
There is the Seneca range in Ridgewood, Queens. Open to the public.
There is the Latin-American Pistol Club in the Bronx - shoot in a range in a converted railway station.
Metropolitan Rod and Gun Club - the oldest, since 1934, a private club in a brownstone in residential Brooklyn. Indoor pistol and archery ranges, Upstate hunting property.
http://www.metrorgc.org/
Stuyvesant Rifle and Pistol - a private club in Middle Village, Queens.
Also out on Long Island is the Peconic River Sportsmans Club - absolutely the nicest facility on L.I. on the old F.W. Woolworth estate (
http://www.peconicriver.com/) - Very private. Expensive.....and yet host to many public shooting events - Trap competitions and Bullseye pistol.
In Nassau County, the Roslyn Rifle and Pistol Club in New Castle - and indoor pistol range - Sectional Bullseye championships are held there each year. With an outdoor facility in Suffolk County.
There is a public pistol range in Freeport - outdoors. Also used by Nassau P.D.
Remember, when you are talking about unsupervised areas to shoot, remember where you are. New York State has 18 million people in it; the NYC/Long Island area has eleven million of them. You are not going to find places where you can just walk into the woods or onto a field and shoot. The largest open to the public area is the 5K acre hunting property on the old RCA microwave facility in the Coram/Ridge/Yaphank part of Suffolk County, bordering Brookhaven Nat'l Lab. Shotgun and Archery only. No range. Get caught shooting there without a permit and you go to jail.
Pete
