ROGERS - Rifle and pistol shooters waiting in line to pull triggers at the Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area shooting range is one indicator of a need for more public shooting ranges in Northwest Arkansas.
The range opens at 8 a.m. By 9 a.m. on Friday, there was already a wait for one of the fi ve shooting stations.
Mark Clippinger, park superintendent at Hobbs, said use of the range has increased to the point that a reservation system and a fee to shoot are being considered.
The Hobbs shooting range is for rifles and pistols only. Shotguns aren’t allowed. There isn’t a public skeet and trap range for shotgunners in the region. Bella Vista has a first-class shooting range, but it’s open only to members of the property-owners association and their guests.
Some indoor pistol ranges are in business in Northwest Arkansas. There are two sporting clays ranges for shotguns. More public shooting facilities are needed here, said Ron Duncan of Springdale, chairman of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission’s panel of commissioners.
Duncan said he’s tried for years to get Game & Fish to build some type of a shooting range in the area.
“I’ve been trying to move in that direction ever since I got on the commission,” Duncan said.
“We need it bad.”
RANGE IN DEMAND
That need has the range at Hobbs bursting at the seams.
Superintendent Clippinger said 15,916 shooters used the range in fiscal year 2013. That’s a jump from the 14,096 who shot at Hobbs the previous year.
There’s a bullet-recovery trap at Hobbs. The lead is recycled. Last fiscal year, 9,958 pounds of lead was recycled, Clippinger said.
When the range opened in 2003, Arkansas State Park officials never dreamed so many people would use it. Clippinger added that $30,000 was spent recently in range repairs. Thousands more have been spent over the years to improve and maintain the range, but no fee is charged.
The range has five shooting stations and it’s unsupervised. Rifle and pistol shooters use the range, but Clippinger said it wasn’t designed for pistol use.
Target distances are 25, 50, 75 and 100 yards. Most pistol shooters practice at shorter ranges. No new range facilities or expansion is planned, Clippinger said. Hobbs is the only Arkansas state park with a shooting range.
There has been only one injury in more than 10 years that the range has been open. A piece of a cartridge broke off when the cartridge was ejected from a gun. It hit a person at the adjacent shooting station.
Shooters themselves think Northwest Arkansas is sorely lacking when it comes to public ranges. Jerry Oliver and Wally Smith were two of the shooters at the Hobbs range on Friday.
“Amen!” Oliver said, when asked if another range was needed in the region. Oliver and Smith said the Hobbs range is nice and they wouldn’t mind paying a fee of one or two dollars to shoot.
Russ Doran of Rogers likes shooting at Hobbs, but said the range needs more stations. The wait can be long, more than an hour on weekends.
“If there are more than five cars in the lot, I turn right around and go to Berryville,” Doran said. He’s talking about Luther Owens Park, a shooting range operated by the city of Berryville. A fee is charged and there are ranges for rifle, pistol and shotgun.
Doran said that, ideally, a new range here would accommodate all shooters - rifle, pistol, muzzleloader and shotgun - like the Bella Vista gun range does.
Caleb Coody, secretary of the Bella Vista Sportmen’s Club, watched shotgun shooters at the Bella Vista range on Saturday. A group of trap shooters fired at flying clay targets. Nearby, other shotgunners enjoyed a round of skeet. There’s an air-conditioned building where shooters can relax, as well as covered picnic tables outside. The grounds are immaculate.
Shooters pay a range fee and pay for the clay targets they use. The range is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Coody guessed it would cost around $1 million for an agency like Game & Fish to build a similar range, or for an individual to build one to operate as a business.
Traps, the machines that throw the clay targets, cost $8,500 each, he said. They have to be maintained and there are other operating costs, Coody noted.
Such a range would have to be supervised, he said. Carrol Harless, range master, has that job at Bella Vista. Harless said the range gets plenty of use, though it is open only two days a week and only to POA members and guests. A total of 520 shooters used the range in June, he said. Twenty-five to 30 shooters is a light day at the range, Harless said. Shotgunners go through 6,000 clay targets on an average day, he said.
Duncan said shooting ranges have been on the back burner at Game & Fish while nature centers were built around the state and other projects completed.
The most recent shooting range Game & Fish built was a partnership between the city of Jacksonville, near Little Rock, and Game & Fish.
“I feel like, if we could find a group up here like that, we could probably get a range built,” Duncan said.
Outdoor, Pages 6 on 07/18/2013