Did not make new friends today.

[frkelly74]

I went to the rifle range to see what was going on during an early Sunday afternoon and it was packed full of people. There was one man there shooting his 22 Mag and by his feet were some 223 brass so I asked him if they were his and he said no, so I asked if I could pick them up and he said sure! So I did and got to talking a little bit about reloading and I told him he could save money getting a 223 and reloading. It was pleasant conversation. However the next station down was a group of people just a blasting away like they had way too much ammo. And I noticed that they looked familiar and also noted a box full of glass booze
bottles sitting by their station. Then I remembered there was an awful mess left of broken glass that I raked up Just a couple days ago. I think I remembered these same people making that mess and leaving it. So I went to speak to them and said I had just cleaned up a mess of broken glass and I hoped they weren't about to leave another mess for someone else to clean up. They kind of ignored me , so I said a, little louder this time, " Broken Glass makes a HE77 of a mess and I hope you don't shoot those or if you do you clean it up nice. The Biggest one turned and said " Oh Really?" kind of snotty like. And I said "Really!" So I figured my good advice was going to be ignored and so I called the RAP line to report an activity that was damaging to the environment to the DNR. I hated to do that, I hate running to the authorities, But I also hated to clean up someone elses mess, And I would really hate to have one of the kids fall down into a mess of broken glass and get cut up. So I will see if there is broken glass next time I go out there. I was really just looking for some peace and quiet and some pleasant conversation.

[Rex]

I hate people that shoot glass and leave it.

[Regnar]

There sure is a lot better stuff to shoot than glass. Charcoal briquettes, pool chalk, water balloons, clay birds, and more. All reactive and cheap. My 2 cents

[jmort]

Nothing worse than trash leaving trash.

[bikerbeans]

CPUs, keyboards, printers and monitors are the favorite of a couple of knuckleheads were I shoot. I belong to a private club and am pushing to install some video cameras. We catch them and they will be gone from out membership roll.

BB

[PS Paul]

Yeah, I just figure bozos like that have their fragile little egos bruised by responding to queries/requests by folk like us, hence the curt response. Of course, those fragile little egos are just a defense mechanism they've learned over time to cover up the fact they are having internal struggles with their homosexual identities. he he

Good on you. I too would not like to have to call on ANY govt. agency, but maybe they need to learn the lesson the hard way, like they learned their homosexual lessons at a younger age the "hard way" as well!!

[rockrat]

Ours is a private range. They would have been gone, having booze at the range, a big violation in our rules.

Don't feel too bad. I have not made friends a few times at our range. I really don't care because what they were doing was unsafe

[btroj]

I am so happy to belong to a private range. Those idiots wouldn't last long at all.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Fr
good on you !
I'm not sure what I'd have done if it was public land...but at my private club, I would have hung around til they shot up the glass and than arrange to have them kicked out of the club.
Jon

[dbosman]

Remote ranges would seem to be a perfect off season trail cam site.

My favorite exploding target is ice balls.
Fill balloons with water and freeze. Take them to the range in a cold insulated cooler. Dry ice will keep the water ice balls from melting. Peel the balloon off when placing the targets. Easy to see, they explode when hit, and the fragments can be made smaller. Nothing to pickup.

[smokeywolf]

Although for most of his adult life Dad was a gunsmith and saddle maker on the side, his main source of income was derived from aerospace as aerodynamics trouble-shooter. He had the Model Shop where he worked cut the nozzle off a JATO bottle and rig a loop of stainless aircraft cable to hang it. That was our target. It made a beautiful CLANG when you hit it.

I understood from my earliest recollections that you leave your camping/picnic/shooting area just as you found it and preferably better.

smokeywolf

[10-x]

Can not ,and will not tolerate booze on the range. See it and I'm gone or go to the RO and it's taken care of. The DNR range is a joke as every D.A. (not District Attorney) take TV's, computer crt's,microwaves, washing machines and copy machines to shoot. Like a junk yard. Sadly they have very good target frames that the idiots have shot up so bad that you have to use tape to hold the target board. They need a full time ranger there, but budget problems prevent that.

[frkelly74]

Ours was like that but has been improving as civilization encroaches. Still there is the occasional DA or as we say it, Yahoo. By the way , they were not drinking that I saw, just getting ready to dispose of their bottles. I checked tonight and there was no new broken glass. So I guess it paid off. I hope that the people had enough smarts to see that it was not proper to trash the place and put their bottles away so that when the C.O. showed up all was well. If they didn't see the writing on the wall then they do deserve a nice fine.

[BruceB]

READ the original post. It was booze BOTTLES they were about to shoot, they didn't have actual booze.

The bottles are bad enough, but let's not make it worse than it actually was.

[Swamp Man]

Glad I have a range on my land and don't have to deal with the fools out on a club or public range.

[WILCO]

Don't feel too bad. I have not made friends a few times at our range. I really don't care because what they were doing was unsafe

I agree. I wouldn't have wasted the time calling the authorities though. Nothing will get done about it, and you'll just be on their radar.

[gkainz]

I just don't understand the mentality of "somebody else will clean it up" or worse, no concept of "clean it up" at all. I come home with about 3x the trash I generate every hunting trip. Just really REALLY tightens my jaw to see all the trash left behind in the woods.

[Ed Barrett]

A lot of people don't believe in the old saying "If it's light enough to carry in full, it's light enough to carry out empty." I always keep large plastic trash bags in my vehicles to clean up at the range or anyplace else. Too many of these littering low life types still have their mothers cleaning up after them.

[Love Life]

One of my huge pet peeves. People will trash up a public shooting area, and then complain when the area gets shut down.

I'm glad you called. I have no problems whatsoever calling the BLM guys when I see people trashing the area and then leave. The BLM guys transfer to the sheriff, I usually have picture evidence, and all is well from there.

Screw them. They come trash our resources and I hope they get very expensive tickets. Punks...

If these people only knew how many places there were on the east coast to pull off the side of the road and go shooting, I bet they would be better behaved.

[km101]

In my area there is no such thing as a range on public land, so I have no idea of the headaches there. But judging from the trash that people leave at the commercial ranges in the area, I have not doubt that the trash at an un-supervised range must be terrible.

A friend is a RO at a local range, and he says that the thing that people leave are unbelievable! Such as: shirts, jackets, glasses, binoculars, keys (how did they get home?) and in one case a .22rf rifle and case! Not to mention a range bag with two pistols inside. They returned for that one!
This is in addition to the usual trash: lunch trash, targets, cardboard boxes, soft drink bottles, water bottles. There are trash barrels all over the various ranges, but they cant seem to hit them any better than they can the targets! He says that target frames have to be replaced almost weekly during the summer due to the misses that eat up the frames. And this is a supervised commercial range!

[Love Life]

People also intentionally shoot target frames.

[Bad Water Bill]

I entered an unsupervised D N R range one day and saw a man?? laying prone with a brand new AR 15 and a stack of about 15 boxes of new ammo.

I looked down to see how he was scoring. HMMM no target.

Yes he was trying to cut the 4 X 4 brace off at the base.

I am just an old GREY haired coot but he left knowing his ---- had been reamed but good.

Eventually thanks to others like himself the range was dozed flat and we lost a range where I used to pick up many pounds of once fired brass every week. [smilie=b:[smilie=b:

[gkainz]

and that right there (above) is the end result of all the cr*p that goes on where people leave their damn brains and manners at home. "We have met the enemy and he is us"...
http://www.igopogo.com/images/Wehavemet01.jpg
Thanks for doing your part to try to educate, Bad Water Bill. We ALL need to take a stand against stupid.

[waksupi]

There is a small informal shooting spot up the mountain from me. I wouldn't call it a range, just an old logging landing. Lots of people shoot there, and stuff gets left laying around. However, I drove up the mountain yesterday, and it was cleaned up very well. It seems to get cleaned pretty regularly, and considering how few actually shoot there, I have to think the shooters just go ahead and clean it up when ever it gets too trashed. I have picked up a lot of brass there.

[BruceB]

Seeing the horror stories here makes me very grateful for my local shooters AND the dedicated few who tend our county range.

This is Humboldt County, Nevada, where the County Commissioners caused a new range to be built a few years back. The range is near Winnemucca.

I'm sure a few fools haul trash up there from time to time, but whenever I visit the range it is CLEAN. This, I believe, is a self-perpetuating condition... if it's clean when shooters arrive, they tend to keep it that way.

Whatever the reason, it's working VERY well.

Just a positive note for this thread.

[BBQJOE]

I agree. I wouldn't have wasted the time calling the authorities though. Nothing will get done about it, and you'll just be on their radar.
A tad off topic, but, I had someone throw a bag of auto trash in my parking lot. It happens somewhat frequently, and makes me mad. We saw the guy throw the bag out, and before he could get out of the lot, he was confronted about it, but just drove off. We got his license plate number, and caught the whole thing on video.

I dug through the bag full of burger wrappers and napkins and junk and found a crumpled up parking citation of some sort, and it had the same license plate number on it.
Being tired of this krap I called the sheriff's office, they in turn gave me another number for an outfit called ERASE or something like that. I talked with the guy there and gave him the plate number.
A few hours later there is a guy looking a lot like a cop or forest ranger at my door. He shows me a print out with a guys name and address and stuff on it. He asks if I know the guy and I told him I didn't. He then asked for the bag of trash.
I asked him what he was going to do. Well, armed with video, and the parking citation and the other info, he said he was off to go return the trash to its owner, and write him a ticket for littering. :-)

Sometimes people do their jobs.

[Dakotared]

At the private rang I shoot at last fall some DA brought their waist oil out and shot it up. We never figured out who did it but have a good idea. Just wish we could prove it so that person would never shoot there again.

[LynC2]

Nothing worse than trash leaving trash.

I totally agree. Good for you!

[Blacksmith]

Our range had a combination lock on the gate. We are now putting in an electronic gate with card access and will have a time stamped report with members number when they arrive and leave. And can deactivate a members access at any time there are problems. It will either make the problem people think twice or they will be gone.

[MaryB]

Last range trip to the private one I belong too some idiot who came in as a guest had walked over to the pistol only range and was punching holes in the flip down steel plates with his AR. I told him to read the damn sign saying pistols only and asked who he was with. The member got suspended for the rest of the year for not controlling his guest.

[shooterg]

We've done as Blacksmith's club above, gone to a key carded gate. We should be able to nail down when something happened and at least ID a witness ! Hate to do it, but next step is cameras. All this $$ coulda been spent on other things, but we're always only one bullet away from losing the range.

[starnbar]

That's the real problem with any club it only takes one or two slobs to get a range shut down and a lot of times they never reopen.

[super6]

I am thinking of going to the card and key system on the range I shoot at. Theres a guy there that wants to shoot after 3 to 4 beers. His wife tells him that he will get kicked out if he keeps doing the same stuff every time he go's if he doesn't change his ways. Its my range she will need the card! Blessed is the home range.

[Bad Water Bill]

When he pulls out the first can he should be told, then after that take the card away.

Yes we may enjoy a drink or so but the range should be dry at all times.

If something should happen and booze was involved even in a small way the lawyers will be around like vultures on a dead ripe carcass.

[sparkz]

Thank God my Son Sean and I have a private range here at the house,
we do invite some people in to shoot and to four wheel there trucks from time to time we let some of the truck clubs hold meets also,
BUT theres a few rules to be followed;
NO Glass, Period the END! its a mess, its dangerous, cuts very expensive tires, and never goes way.. CANS only..
NO DRINK / Smoke / drugs/ when shooting, driving, or anything at all, at night when they camp its fine but never on range or wheeling or even watching....
whatch fires if you have them at night NO burning trash ( save some paper like things)
If you bring it in take it out.........
don't damage flower or fauna if it can be helped and use tree savers for wenches

we live here and use the farms and most guys know not to mess up a good thing
I am easy going but I do stand firm on these issues

but at night when days done have fun just don't be stupid, well to much haha,,



Patrick & Sean Campbell
Lost Creek, Kentucky