Closed Shooting Range: Colman Rod and Gun Club

This is more or less the sort of thing I've been planning to do about a local shopping mall for awhile now, but have yet to be able to set aside the time to do it.

I'd also inteded to do this on my Tumblr, but I'm not sure how to format posts there the way I want this one to be, so here it is on Blogger instead. I'm hoping to get to the mall while the weather's still nice, but with everything else going on in my life right now, it may have to wait until next year sometime.

So, anyway, the first Wednesday of September, my dad and I went out and looked around the countryside for a few hours. The first place we stopped was a place I've always heard called the Colman Rod and Gun Club, although it had been a publicly-owned shooting range for quite a long time. It was purchased with state and federal funds raised through the sale of hunting and fishing licences and, to at least some small extent, a tax on related equipment, gear, and expendables. I know there's a specific law that defines how that all works, but I can't quite recall the name of it. It's the Putnam-Something Act. I had meant to ask my dad or look it up somewhere. Since I seem to have failed to do so in a timely manner, I'll add an update to this when I find what I'm looking for.

I do have a pair of pictures I got in the couple minutes we were there, just to see that the place was, indeed, closed.

This shows what the rules for the place were. From what I can remember of the few times I used the place, the first two things were not really problems, in that I don't remember seeing any trees with many or any intentional bullet holes in them, nor were there remains of glass objects or electronics that had been used as targets. It's the second two things that were more the problem, in that there was a lot of other trash around, and funding to maintain the place was an issue, as I'm not sure how many, if any, users actually made the donations the last bullet point was asking for, and I'm not sure what might happen if something is sent to the address on the sign.

As a result of said lack of funding from the City of Colman, which was the last entity responsible for running this place after the state Game Fish and Parks Department turned it over to them, the place is indeed closed, as indicated by the sign in the lower left corner of the second image here. I had hoped to get a better shot of it, but given how briefly we were there, this is actually pretty good. There used to be a table people could use to steady their aim on that was about 100 yards from a large berm that would have been to the west of this scene, if memory serves. It would have been about halfway between where the signs are and the ladder by the tree, which leads up to an elevated platform that was about the hight of a tree stand. The distance to the target was about the same, I believe.

The primary purpose of this place, as I understood it, was for people to sight in their high-powered rifles for various big-game seasons, which still seem quite popular locally. Now that this place is closed to the public, I'm not sure where those of us who can't afford or don't want to pay for memberships to private ranges but still want to participate in rifle-only big game seasons can go for target practice, because I'm pretty sure the hunting laws here in South Dakota prohibit target practice in the other hunting areas.

As I said above, funding and litter control rated pretty high as causes for why this place wound up being closed, and even then, most of the obvious material left around were old targets left on the berm used as a backstop and the brass shell casings left behind by quite a lot of users. It seems like the last few times we could actually get in there, we came away with enough brass to at least partially fund other such trips.

Although this place is closed, I'm still glad there's a decent amount of other public land around that folks like me can go hunt on if we want to. That's why I usually buy a license and a duck stamp every year, even if I don't go use it. Having these lands and waters available for the fish and wildlife is something I consider important. I'd like to think such things will be around for a few more generations to get enjoyment out of, even if they don't get the hunting experience from them I had growing up.