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any crazy public range stories to add?

raisins

raisins

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2019
Messages
6,270
I guess I'm feeling sentimental this morning and was thinking of my old range.

I used to live in Syracuse, NY for school and was lucky to have a really nice public range nearby at a large public park.

I was there all the time and a public range near a large city has some odd things happen. Here's 3 I remember.

1. Guy bends an arrow and gets mad. To dispose of the arrow, he points the bow at a 45 degree angle and lets it rip, not knowing that we were surrounded by people (dog park to one side, parking lot over there, walking trail over yonder). We all yell at him. No ambulances came, so I guess no one got hurt.

2. A mom and dad that aren't bow shooters take their son with his first walmart bow. They stand right next to the target to get action shots for facebook. I tell them "hey, that 20 lbs bow can still really hurt you. you should always stand behind the archer". They glare at me like I'm the biggest idiot that has ever lived and keep cheering him on while taking pictures and video.

3. There was this older white guy that thought he was a ninja or something. He had the full Japanese robe get up and a long bamboo bow and huge arrows with huge fletchings. He would do this whole pre shot procession and ritualistic shooting,,,,prancing around and waving the bow around. He was there pretty regularly. He was an absolutely horrible shot with that thing. And it was so slow the arrows were like javelins. Anyways, there were like 10 or so targets and he's smack dab in the middle. People start shooting and I don't see the Zen master. I look and he is in the lotus position downrange behind his target meditating. I don't shoot and when the coast is clear I go tell him "hey, it isn't safe to sit on the ground down range while people are shooting". Again, dirty look like I'm a fool.

Anything to add? Not limited to archery either, as gun ranges are more common.

EDIT: I chock this up to city folk getting started in a hobby without any continuity of older generations taking them out and teaching them basic safety. The funny thing is that a lot of people up there treated me like I was "slow" because I had a slight WV accent.
 
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I was retrieving arrows with a buddy at a local range and had an arrow smack into the target 20 feet to our right. The kid who let it go said it seemed like we were plenty far away....
 
Had a guy walk directly under my tree quick drawing his rifle to every little noise like elmer fudd. I finally got his attention (I was in blaze orange mind you) and told him to move it along. Private family land I might add. He walked 40 yds from me, took a leak, cleared leaves around the base of a hemlock and took a seat for the afternoon. When I waved at him directing him to leave he gave me the finger. I may or may not have emptied my gun over his head into the hemlock and he may or may not have ran like a gazelle never to be seen on our land again.
 
Buddy had a keltec sub 2000 blow up in his face at the range. Fun times.

I was once at the wma shooting range and had a possum run out. I popped him just on reflexes. Forgot the game warden was standing next to me chatting with a fella. He looked at me and said, "You know the range is a no hunting zone and it's a 500 ticket to hunt inside the perimeter of the safety zone, right?"

I was like, well...see...officer...I

"I'm just messing. Those f'ers eat turkey eggs. If another one walks out shoot him too."
 
Nutterbuster said:
Buddy had a keltec sub 2000 blow up in his face at the range. Fun times.

I was once at the wma shooting range and had a possum run out. I popped him just on reflexes. Forgot the game warden was standing next to me chatting with a fella. He looked at me and said, "You know the range is a no hunting zone and it's a 500 ticket to hunt inside the perimeter of the safety zone, right?"

I was like, well...see...officer...I

"I'm just messing. Those f'ers eat turkey eggs. If another one walks out shoot him too."
Click to expand...
That sounds like the warden we used to have around here.
 
BackSpasm said:
I was retrieving arrows with a buddy at a local range and had an arrow smack into the target 20 feet to our right. The kid who let it go said it seemed like we were plenty far away....
Click to expand...

How do people not realize that if you can hunt moose with a bow that it is more deadly than a 22 LR? Again, he probably didn't have someone teach him safety. If you are taught safety starting with a BB gun, slingshot, knife, and kid's bow....then it is ingrained as part of who you are.
 
raisins said:
How do people not realize that if you can hunt moose with a bow that it is more deadly than a 22 LR? Again, he probably didn't have someone teach him safety. If you are taught safety starting with a BB gun, slingshot, knife, and kid's bow....then it is ingrained as part of who you are.
Click to expand...
This was at least a crappy little recurve with the blunt capped arrow ends and not a compound, but agreed completely. Based on his shooting, he didn't have anyone to teach him anything at all.
 
I live 30 minutes from Syracuse, I have no stories, people like that are a daily occurrence around here, I blame it on 4 months of winter and bad genetics LMAO
 
I have a few to share from a local WMA rifle range.
1)Years ago I needed to check my rifle zero and it was raining the day I had time so I decided to use my local WMA range due to it having a roof over the bench area.
I get there and it was packed with guys thinking the same thing I guess so I get in line.
As I’m waiting there is this one guy giving everyone shooting instructions and pointers and I can tell this guy thinks he knows everything about shooting but with some of his statements I know he does not.
I finally get up to the bench the dude is getting on my nerves and everyone else’s so I’m thinking I want this to go well so I can leave.
My cold shot breaks clean and hits its mark so I start packing up my gear getting ready to leave and the guy giving all the instructions shoots a hole through the roof of the range from behind us.
That dude never says a word and gets in his truck and leaves.
Thank goodness the muzzle was pointed up.

2)Same range different day a guy was sighting in a muzzle loader and forgot his ramrod in the barrel and fires it.
The recoil cuts his eye and almost knocks him off the bench.
The thing is he didn’t even know he had shot his ramrod until trying to reload again he thought the extra pellet caused all the added recoil.
We all go down range looking for it and find very small pieces of it laying about.
Luckily he wasn’t hurt bad due to that range uses long tubes to cut down on noise.
At the end of the tube it has a sheet of plywood with a square cut in it.
If that ramrod would have bounced back that’s a bad day but luckily it exploded and went out the down range end of the tube.
I haven’t been there in years and have no plans to go back.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
While finishing up grad-school in Louisville I had the choice of two public archery ranges. Both were in pretty big parks but we’re smack dab in the middle of a city with over 1 million people.At one range I was all alone shooting my bow at around 40 yards and a foreign feller who spoke no english(or acted like he didn’t) walks up with a .22 rifle, lays prone and fires off a half dozen shots. Gets back up and walks back to his sports car and leaves. I guess he just wanted to blow off steam??
The other range was a classic walking down range issue with one old fart who seemed oblivious that other people were shooting
 
Treehopper2 said:
I have a few to share from a local WMA rifle range.
1)Years ago I needed to check my rifle zero and it was raining the day I had time so I decided to use my local WMA range due to it having a roof over the bench area.
I get there and it was packed with guys thinking the same thing I guess so I get in line.
As I’m waiting there is this one guy giving everyone shooting instructions and pointers and I can tell this guy thinks he knows everything about shooting but with some of his statements I know he does not.
I finally get up to the bench the dude is getting on my nerves and everyone else’s so I’m thinking I want this to go well so I can leave.
My cold shot breaks clean and hits its mark so I start packing up my gear getting ready to leave and the guy giving all the instructions shoots a hole through the roof of the range from behind us.
That dude never says a word and gets in his truck and leaves.
Thank goodness the muzzle was pointed up.

2)Same range different day a guy was sighting in a muzzle loader and forgot his ramrod in the barrel and fires it.
The recoil cuts his eye and almost knocks him off the bench.
The thing is he didn’t even know he had shot his ramrod until trying to reload again he thought the extra pellet caused all the added recoil.
We all go down range looking for it and find very small pieces of it laying about.
Luckily he wasn’t hurt bad due to that range uses long tubes to cut down on noise.
At the end of the tube it has a sheet of plywood with a square cut in it.
If that ramrod would have bounced back that’s a bad day but luckily it exploded and went out the down range end of the tube.
I haven’t been there in years and have no plans to go back.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Had a guy with 2 sons set up a homemade metal hanging gong like 10 feet from the benches. It is made of thick aluminum plate and has huge splash marks making it swiss cheese where you can see it has shot metal all over before and probably back at people. I tell him "hey, that's super dangerous" as he is getting his pistol ready to shoot it. He looks at me and says "haven't got hurt yet!"

I get up and leave. I call DNR and tell them to post some rules they refuse and say "don't you know that you just can't fix stupid?"
 
When i first started hunting I hunted a gun range my brother owned that was surrounded by private
My brother heavily baited his spots.
he thought it would draw all the deer onto his property.
Funny because really diddnt realize he would draw a few EMU’s from an exotic farm down the road.
I sat over bait one night and had two giant emus come into the bait
We used vhf radios back then to communicate and i quickly contacted my brother telling him I knew what was cleaning our bait up so quickly.
funny thing too was deer never minded them came right in and ate right next to them
 
Our range by my house has pretty strictly enforced rules by the range master(DNR operated). I’m shooting my muzzleloader and this dude and his probably 8/9 year old son come up with his tactically tacticalness scoped AR like he’s Rambo or something. He pulls out this big humanoid target and when the range master clears the range to set up targets he puts this thing down there. Now the range is strictly sport shooting, this isn’t a self defense range or a police/military range. There is absolutely no humanoid targets allowed. He sets it up down range and the son is shooting at this person target. I hear the dad go “are you aiming at the head?” I’m thinking this range master is gonna make them take it down, sure enough he catches it. “Sir you have to take that target down, no human targets.” Guy is like “are you kidding me!” Gets all huffy about it. Rules are rules dude.
 
I have one from a private range that many nonmembers use. I was there by myself one saturday morning, working loads for my flintlock. This fella pulls up, grabs a rifle from the bed of his truck. Naturally, I'm cautious and guarded, as it didnt appear to me that he unlatched or even opened a case. I say hi, he just waves sits down at the closest bench pulls a round from his pocket and loads and pulls the trigger. Luckily I had my muffs on still, because his barrel blew up, split into three!!!! Scares the crap out him and me. I scream are you ok, he gives me a thumbs up, grabs the remains of his rifle jumps in his truck and drives off. I was left sitting there think "*** did I just witness????". I obviously reported it to the club but I had no clue who he was, it was definitely strange how he just shows up, blows his rifle apart, and just leaves. This all happened in roughly 10mins start to finish.
 
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