My Gun Club

[xl_target]

I was fooling around with Google Maps and came across my gun club. I though I would post it here for all to see.
All the land that you can see in the image ( and more) belongs to the club and can be hunted. In the off season, one can camp overnight here too.
The archery ranges are behind the gun ranges. The white lines are concrete pathways, the green areas around the gun range is mowed grass so you can find your brass. The shooting shack has wood and concrete benches and a concrete floor. The roof is wood. The club house is a regular building with heat and air conditioning and a bathroom. One of my arrows are a little off. The shooting shack is the square building at the intersection of the 25 yd and 50 yd concrete strips.

In the winter I shoot indoors at a regular range as this whole area is snow covered and walking to the 200 yard berm through four foot of snow is hard and I'm lazy! It also gets bitterly cold here so shooting outdoors in mid-winter is no fun.



A couple of weekends ago, I was over there shooting my handguns with a friend. This was the weekend of deer hunting and a guy came over, parked by the trees behind the range, got his gun out and went out towards the fields in the back. My friend and I had just packed up and were standing around talking when we saw a deer feeding over by his truck. We got a good laugh out of that as he was probably quite a ways off and what he was looking for was just hanging around his truck (about 50 yards away from us). Neither of us had purchased a deer license this year so we just enjoyed watching it as it browsed about cropping the grass by his truck.

[Subal das]

fantastic place, did you designed and constructed it or bought as it is

[xl_target]

Subal,
I am just a member. There are about 500 members whose dues support this club. Apart from owning the range, we do take part in conservation activities like wetland conservation and purchasing land for refuges, etc. We also have many youth programs like sending disadvantaged youths to camps during the summer. We also teach hunter Safety classes and put on programs for kids like Archery classes, etc.

The range was designed and built by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources with input from club members. Some of our hunting license dollars and Government grant money at work, I guess. It is a gated facility and you need a key to get in and only members may shoot there (liability issues). The range is not very heavily used. Many times I am the only one there, even on the weekends. I'd say that only about 10 percent of the members use the range on a regular basis.

[prashantsingh]

Looks nice and big.
Would appreciate some snaps from ground level. Do take your camera on your next visit.
Do they have a "trophy room" as well ?

[xl_target]

Prashantsingh,
The next time I go there, I will try to take my camera along with me. I keep intending to do that every time I go there but by the time I have all the shooting stuff and ammo put together, I usually forget. There have been times when I have had the camera in the car but haven't remembered to take it out.

No trophy room but there are some waterfowl prints on the walls. While the vast majority of the members are hunters, the name of the club is the Key City Conservation Club. We also get money donated to use for conservation projects so I don't think having trophies around the place would go over with some of our donors. Many of these donors are happy to give someone else the money to pay for a project but they are not interested in doing the work themselves. So it is up to us to get out there and get dirty, whether it is shoring up the banks of a stream, laying out nesting boxes, planting trees, restoring drained lands back to swamp (wetlands). See what I mean by saying that it is mostly the hunters who care enough to do conservation work. The work is hot and dirty, you don't get paid travel expenses or for meals and many end up spending weekends away from their families. Most of the rest can't make it off their couch, with writing nasty letters to the editor (about hunters and hunting) and yelling at people on gun forums being the sum total of their conservation efforts.

[xl_target]

Since Prashantsingh requested photos, I decided to go out there this morning.
My wife was shopping, so I had a short time to kill before I picked her up.
It was a dull overcast, foggy, snowy day so please pardon the rather lifeless snaps.




Shotgun Area



Shotgun area with underground trap house


Shooting Shack interior




view from shooting shack



The 25 yard pistol range is at right angles to the previous view so rifle fire can continue while the pistol range is used.

side view of the 25 yard bullet trap


range supplies like beanbags, sandbags, rests, etc are kept in a waterproof barrel.



Tomahawk and knife throwing targets (facing 180 degrees) behind the rifle/pistol area


To the archery range


start of hunting area


Part of the archery range


A lake in the rear of the property. You can see that ice is starting to form on the surface.

[prashantsingh]

Thanks. That's a beautiful , big , well planned shooting club , which caters for all types of arms .
I was rather surprised to see the tomahawk and knife throwing area.

[vmanicks]

Very impressive.

Do you guys practice during the winter fall?

Should be tough task walking thro the pile of Snow.

[xl_target]

vmanicks,
Normally, I shoot at an indoor range during the winter. It's not so much the snow as the cold. I have seen temperatures drop to minus 65 deg F with the windchill here. Exposing your extremities for more than a few minutes at those temps can result in frostbite. Often, however, there will be warm days when I could shoot outdoors but it usually means trudging through about four feet of snow to hang my targets. Also any brass ejected is instantly lost in the snow.

We had a real nice fall and I was able to keep shooting there till just last week. Normally most of Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb and parts of March can be cold. I much prefer the outdoor range as I like being outdoors. At the indoor range, its loud, you can feel the concussion from most shots fired and the gun smoke tends to hang around despite the ventilation system. Also at the indoor range, we pay by the hour and I'm always in a hurry to get done.

[vmanicks]

Oh yea. I have been in Chicago this year during the peak winter. Exposing to those temperatures and walking around becomes a big task.

Btw where in US do you live. Mostly I would be in US early 2011. Would love to see some shooting ranges. Last time I had a chance to see the private shooting range at BassPro at Gurnee Mills, IL.

[xl_target]

I'm in Southern Minnesota. Let me know if you are in the area.

[StormWerkz]

Hey xl_target,
What range is that? I am up in Superior, WI. I get down to New Prague once in a while, anywhere nearby?

[xl_target]

Hey StormWerkz, its by Mankato, MN.
About an hour from New Prague?
What's new in Souptown? I lived there for a short time.

[vmanicks]

Would be visiting the east coast early next year.

I don't mind travelling to MN to check your range

Will keep you posted on my plans.

[AKV]

I am at kolkata,I want to join the club.please tell me what should i do and also the fees. And please tell me how to obtain an arms licence. Please