How To Build A Shooting Range Outdoors?

Before knowing how to build a shooting range outdoors, you need to know why you wanna do that. Is it just for your personal shooting practice or you wanna run it commercially.

Well, for the first scenario, it’s fairly simple but the later one requires a lot of jobs to do including some legal works. But you are in the right place and I will give you all the information you need to know for both the types of shooting range.

Outdoor Commercial Shooting Range

Okay, let’s cover it first. Since it is commercial, you need to think hard about it. You must know why shooters will come to your range. Keep the following points in your mind:

• The number of shooters you need to think about deeply. They are the deciding factor whether your shooting range will be successful or not. How many shooters you can accommodate in your range.
• Get a professional supervisor unless you want an unsupervised shooting range. If you have experience, you can be that supervisor as well.
• Kinds of guns, headphones to minimize gunshot, and ammo you will allow in the range.
• What you customer prefers? Self-defense or hunting?

Instead of indoor shooting, there are lots of good reasons why you should go for the outdoor shooting range. Here are some reasons:

• It feels more realistic to the shooters. They won’t feel bored at all.
• Definitely, there is plenty of mobility for the shooters in an outdoor shooting range.
• In comparison with indoor shooting, the outdoor shooting range is lot more cost effective and easier to set up.
• Only the outdoor shooting range can ensure lots of shooting stations, so you can have lots of shooters shooting at the same time.

Now that you have understood some vital facts for starting an outdoor shooting range, let’s learn what more to do to build a range.

Legal Issues For Shooting Range

Your local government authority will be the deciding factor whether you can have an outdoor shooting range or not. Build a strong rapport with them. Shooting range laws vary from state to state across the USA. So, you the local authority of yours can help you out following all the compliance related issues.

Speak with the city council and the county commissioner to get the precise legal compliance and guidelines that you must follow. You need to have a good relationship with them to continue your commercial shooting range.

Instruments Requirement For The Range

In addition to the guns and ammo, you need to have some other stuff. A piece of land is required, right. You may already have it otherwise you need to buy it. When you need to buy it, consider the neighborhood as well. Then get a backstop berm. Man-made or vegetation made does not matter. To secure the backstops, you can use the sandboxes.

I must admit, backstop berm involves cost. But if you want to go cheap, then you can use the butt of a tree with some modifications. For the proper disposal of the bullets, you need a bullet catcher. And don’t forget about the firing line bench; a must have for the shooters to aim shots.

Launching Your Shooting Range

After you have taken all the necessary steps, it’s time to launch your range. This stage requires lots of steps to be followed:

• Promoting The Range: Set your target customers. You can go for several promotion techniques such as business cards, billboards, and online advertisement like promoting on the social media. Make sure you have your own website to give your range an identity.
• Safety Guidelines: Shooting range requires lots of safety guidelines to be followed. If you are planning to hire employees, make sure to follow OSHA guidelines. Also, ensure your range has plenty of earphones, earplugs and other safety gears.
• Get Ratings: Real ratings and reviews from actual shooters are a great way to attract new shooters. You should immediately contact the NSSF (National Shooting Sports Foundation) for their rating. It will increase the trust of your range a lot.
• Build Trust In The Communities: Offer free training for the security officers of the community schools. Occasionally arrange a workshop on gun safety in the community. Once the community starts loving your range, you should have plenty of regular customers.

In a gist, I have discussed almost everything you need to know about building a new outdoor shooting range. I hope this blog will be helpful to bring your dream range into reality.