Public or Private Range

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Private club, its the best money I ever spent. I live in CT so range time is expensive, I pay $500 a year for the club but its cheaper than paying $20-$30 everytime a go.

Plus the club is better, usualy no one is their, and no range officers. I hate being around people and range officers.

I look at it this way, its way cheaper than the yacht club and country club!:D


I envy all the guys out west that can just go and set up on public land, that would be the best! Plus they can shoot 1k yards or more, in CT 100 yards is about it. Hartford has a 200 yard range but its further than I want to drive.
 
I live about an hour out of Albuquerque, New Mexico and my land ajoins public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. I can walk out my back door and I have my own 100 yard range, and if I want a longer range I drive about 15 minutes onto the BLM land and I can shoot as far as I want to, up to 1,000 yards easily. I can shoot anything I want out there, no jerks around to bother me or for me to worry about. It's nice.:neener:
 
All Public Here

Unfortunately that's about all there is for me. You should have done a poll. Would've been interesting to see the outcome. I asked a similiar question about everyone's ranges' rules. Decided not to do poll, but wish I had now.

I would LOVE to be able to go out to the boonies and shoot all my various firearms to my heart's content. All public land around here is saturated with hunters and, though legal, shooting just for fun around there is just asking for confrontation. Not worth my time.

And when I decide to hunt out there, I won't want anyone scaring away my chances either.
 
Both. I'm a member of two private shooting ranges, but I also shoot on BLM land on occasion, especially when I'm traveling across the state. It's good to have options.
 
Private for me. My yearly dues are only $35! The reason our dues are so low is because the members are expected to help work on the range clean up days and especially our sporting clays matches which is our main source of income. I don't really consider it "work" when I have to go to the range to help out, I mean come on now you're going to the range after all!

Many years ago there was a nice public range with 100 and 25 yard bays. It was a completely unsupervised come as you are affair and you can probably guess what happened because of that. All it takes is a few rotten apples........
 
I've belonged to a private club for years. Lately though I have been going to public/commercial ranges more often because the new administration at the club has become somewhat dictatorship-like with its rules. For example, we are no longer allowed to shoot at anything resembling a human (e.g. IDPA silhouettes, hostage taker pictures, etc) and can't have more than one firearm out at a time.
 
I shoot at a public range, unfortunately. As you can probably imagine, it's unsupervised and shot all to hades. I won't go to shoot there without wearing body armor.
 
Our closest outdoor range (45 minutes) is at a Wildlife Management Area run by the County, and open to all at no cost.
 
Mostly I shoot on my own range but I pay my annual dues to shoot on a range that is closer to home. There are no public ranges open to civilians in the area as far as I can tell.
 
The range of the club of which I'm the vice president is as of at this moment open to the public. This will be changing in the future as there are people that are not members that will come in to shoot and leave a mess or shoot up the target backers with their shotguns. We have just posted that no shotguns are allowed at the rifle range. As for pistols those that want to shoot their pistols go to the pistol range which is separate from the rifle range and in between there is quite a bit of open space that the shotgunners that want to pattern their shotguns can bring their own targets and blast away. Although I personally haven't caught anybody shooting our backers with shotguns the evidence is there. I have seen where they have shot the backers and the 2X4's that hold them enough that we have had to replace them which we all know can run into quite a bit of money if enough of them are destroyed. We have no limit on fast you shot or the amount of rounds you can have in your gun. The local police from several towns around here come to do their yearly qualifying and we don't have a problem with this.
 
Public ranges concern me, I have seen too many so called "experts" teaching people how to shoot when they truly do not have a clue. I want to know who is around me rather than a bunch of strangers around who I have no idea what their experience is. Plus I do not like the fact that mant public ranges have the 2 second rule and do not allow drawing from a concealed holster. I am a member at a semi-private membership only range and never have to worry about who is around me and can practice and train how I choose......
 
I shoot at a public range. It's out in the middle of no where just of a major state highway. It is just past a rock quarry. On the other side of the highway is a state park and camp ground. There are alos hiking and horse riding trails that lead off from the shooting range.

There are no managers, range officers or anything. It is self policed. It has 25, 50, and 100 yard ranges. Two concrete benches at each station. And the only rule is paper targets only. But since everyone minds their own business, other items are brought. Nothing major, but small items. Mellons, phone books, etc.

And it's 10 minutes from my house.
 
I am blessed to have my own property with a 3500sqft shop with a reloading room that I can shoot out to 600 yards out of. Can shoot in rain, sleet or snow and out to 300yds at night.

Here's a pic of the reloading room with benchrest.(work in progress)

Picture026.jpg
 
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I shoot mostly at my pistol range I set up on my property. If the weather is crummy or I want to try out a different gun, I go to the closest gun shop with an indoor range and guns to rent.
 
SC State range, about a 20 minute drive from home in the Francis Marion National Forest. 100 yards tall berm, with a low pistol berm also. No RO or supervision of any kind. Idiots did makes a mess of it, but now there is a monthly volunteer clean up and that seems to keep the place in good order.

I think there are really three types of ranges: public (open to anyone, free); private but members can join; private (can only be used by the owner and his guests).

I plan to have one of the latter one day.
 
I also have live outside the city limits so I'm able to shoot on my property. I only shoot my 22's at home, usually with sub-sonic ammo. The neighbors don't care, because aside from some target practice and teaching the kids, I take care of any varmint problems. Even the Sheriff that lives a few houses down supports my shooting. He lets me know when there is something lurking around the neighborhood that needs to be taken care of.
 
I have a membership at a private club. It is very close to where I live. However, I honestly prefer to shoot at a public range which is about an hour's drive. I will still keep the membership as it took me years to get in. Cost is not a huge issue as I'd spend the membership fee in a couple visits in ammunition cost.
 
Best little 100 yard range I ever shot at was a public (& free) range in PA.
It was nothing fancy with a modest wooden bench on the firing line & a wooden post supported 8'x4' fiber board target area.

What I liked about the range was that it was literally a 10' wide narrow corridor cut through 40' tall forest which seriously dampened wind velocities. The wind could be blowing 30 mph everywhere else & wouldn't even be noticeable on that dandy little range. That way I know what the rifle is doing without any wind induced variables clouding the issue.
The next best thing to a completely indoor 100 yard range.
My home range is one of those open football field affairs & you have to pick your shooting days to properly "zero" a rifle. I've seen the wind so fierce on some days that you couldn't see the targets for flying debris & dust.
Another advantage at my little PA "bush range" was no irritating two-legged nuisances of the humanoid kind aka Range Nazis.:D
 
I belong to two private ranges and being retired I normally have them to myself during the day. There is a open public range run by the Pa Game Commission nearby that I stay far away from at all times. It is unsupervised and the outlaw type bikers and gang bangers that frequent that range frankly scare me, and I'm a big ex football lineman type. Several people have had their firearms stolen while they are down range changing targets.
 
Well, up until this past year, I only shot on our land, or friends farms. Both of which have spots we can shoot. I can shoot at the friends up to 4-500 yards, and at our place we have a 100 yard range setup in one spot, as well as a 36 yard range out back, as well as a spot for a 15 yard range. It's a great setup, but due to woods, hills, etc, I can't shoot much further than 100 yards. Plus, it's about a 45 minute drive from our house to get to the land. There is a house there so we can stay once we get up there, but it's still a drive. I still shoot there a decent bit, but I decided to go check out a public shooting range in the State Forest in the past year. It's about an hour away, but I found that I really enjoy it. When I got there it had several nice shooting benches under a covered area, as well as a restroom. They have a 50 yard, 100 yard, and 150 yard rifle ranges, and then a 25 yard pistol range that's separate. First thing I noticed, is that even though it says paper targets only people have shot other stuff, as well as shooting holds in the roof of the cover over the benches, shooting holes in the restroom door, etc. It's a shame that people did that, but luckily I've never seen anyone do that while I was there. This range doesn't have a range officer, so it's up to the people to make sure everything is going okay. Overall, I've had a good experience and met some really nice guys. I've also gotten lots of free brass, and even had one guy that let me come pick up a ton of brass he had at himself. That's why I've gone back a few times. It's just been nice meeting some of the guys as well as sometimes picking up some brass even thought I don't always get any brass. If I'm out that way I stop by there and shoot some now.
The only thing I've seen that was dumb, and made me want to leave, was that there was a group of guys shooting at the 50 yard range. They would take a shot then walk up to the target after each shot to see where it hit. Since I was shooting a muzzle loader, I was fine with this and we were the only people there. I just took it apart and swabbed after every shot while they walked up to the target. Eventually, they decided it would be a good idea for one of them to just stand off to the side of the target so that they didn't have to walk up every time. So one walked maybe 15 feet off to the side and stood behind a small tree that didn't really hide him. This made me very uneasy with someone down range. I wanted to tell them how much of an idiot I thought they were, but I decided to just keep my mouth shut and wait until they left before I returned shooting.

We do have a private range not too far away, but I refuse to join that place for several reasons. It's pretty expensive, and it has really strict rules that are ridiculous. On top of that, it's fairly hard to get into, as well as you have to do a bit of work days for them in addition to paying the ridiculous fee's, then having several ridiculous rules you have to follow. The only upside I see to this place is the competitions. However, you don't have to be a member to compete in those anyway.
 
State Range since they closed all 3 up North of Denver I now drive down to Cherry Creek. Sometimes in the summer I go to the ones in the National Forrest.
 
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