I see this getting worse at my range, too. It's been there since 1946, but a few years ago, before I joined, some local real estate bigwig built a house
on a hill downrange.
Now, this is a great club, and the first thing the officers did when they noticed construction up there (you can just see the roof over the berm from the highest point of the rifle line when the leaves are off the trees!
) was stop by and talk to the contractor, then to the owner, about the wisdom of building there. He wasn't interested in hearing about it.
Until he had the house built, when he decided he had rights and started claiming he could hear bullets going over his house and splashing in his pond. This range does not allow firing while moving or drawing from holsters, specifically because they don't want a shot going over the berm. They've also paid a fortune to raise the rifle line and extend and raise the berms, and they don't allow metal or glass targets so as not to allow ricochets.
None of it matters to this idiot. He's still claiming bullets are hitting the pond and he still claims he can hear them going over his head--except that he doesn't actually know what they sound like. He says they buzz like bees, every time. I think he read a similar description in a detective novel or something.
The thing is, we can confound this guy for now, but as development continues all around, I can see it all going away. And although we own the land, we have some kind of long-term lease with the township that essentially means we stay as long as they let us. If they decide they'd rather have the tax revenue from some developer who doesn't want us around, I don't see what we can do. Fortunately, the club is in decent financial shape with a fair surplus. It's possible we could relocate further out somewhere.
They could put it a couple of miles outside my little town and have no development to worry about. We have enough on our hands to keep the businesses we have.