Gunowners need to realize there’s a limited supply of land
February 1, 2009

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

There’s an old saw about investing your money which seems to be extremely relevant to the future of the shooting sports in this country, including hunting and recreational shooting. It is advice to “put your money into land because there is only so much of it.”

That is an underlying simplification of what Don Turner has addressed in his article on the future if recreational shooting in the Western states which appears on Pages 11 and 12 if this issue. Turner’s article addresses the problem faced by shooters who used to have so much space—mostly on vacant federal lands—that they could shoot almost anywhere they wanted, and often within walking distance or as short drive from where they lived and worked.

Turner discusses the problem and offers some recommendations based on his experience in trying to provide and manage public shooting areas in Western states. But the problem is not just limited to the West. Growing populations and surging development of land in other parts of the country have long since taken their toll on hunting and recreational shooting.

And it is all related to the fact that there is just so much land available, even 50 to 100 miles away from major population centers. As new residential and commercial development expands into the available land, it eventually comes up against vacant or undeveloped fields, woods and waters. The first indication is the posting of landowners’ signs barring hunting, fishing or other entrance onto the land. Before long, the wall of signs spreads all across the once popular recreational land.

I have personally seen the use of open fields and forests once used for shooting and hunting disappear, not just in the east where I have mostly lived, but just about everywhere from east to west and north to south. If there are more than a handful of houses and people, along a road, you will soon see gas stations, supermarkets, big department stores and especially fast food restaurants. Wetlands disappear under huge retail malls and strip plazas. In a few years, vast tracts of open lands disappear.

Of course, there are federal and state laws regulating such development, especially when wetlands are involved, but required studies can often be fudged to allow the development. And the fact that a shooting range, for example, was there long before the developers bought up adjacent land doesn’t matter much. Such disputes over conflicting interests usually end up in court, and the courts will usually go along with the largest or most important interest.

More than one rod and gun club has been closed because of such competing interests. Closure is only a part of the problem; often the use of the club for shooting is limited to certain hours and days, reducing the utility of the property for that purpose. And if it isn’t the court that decides for the newcomers, it is the town council or the zoning board. That’s happened a lot in the East, South and Midwest. And today it is happening in Western states; not just California, Oregon and Washington, but it Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and other states where one or another government agency controls so much land-supposedly in the public interest.

I’ve known clubs or commercial ranges which were eventually closed and the property sold because new neighbors complained so much about the noise or the “danger” and brought so many suits that the range or club was finally closed and the property sold because no one could afford to finance the defense in court.

Places where we hunted small game in my youth are no longer huntable lands. There is no more hunting of any kind anywhere near there. In fact, most have hunting and/or firearms discharge bans. They are just wider roads and a never ending string of commercial enterprises.

One gun club, most trap and skeet but with an indoor pistol range, survived in the area for years. The shooting fields faced toward land owned by the State University of New York but the buildings on that campus, while visible from the shooting stands, were well out of range, and the university never complained. The long strip of land owned by the club was along a busy highway with middle income housing across the road.

Curiously, the club survived there for years against the entreaties of land developers whose bids kept rising because the people who owned the homes across the road wanted the club to stay. They had bought the newly built homes across from the club years earlier and knew what the club’s activities sounded like. They could sit on their front patios or in their living rooms and watch the shooters compete. But the majority preferred to keep the shooters and their guns rather than have a developer put up high-rise apartments or condominiums and stores to change their view.

Eventually, the developers offered the club a price in millions for their land that they simply couldn’t refuse.

Needless to say, the developers still haven’t been able to launch their plans because the neighbors across the street are still opposed to alerting the landscape and fighting at zoning meetings and in the courts, and the club is buying cheaper land miles away from the population centers but, for now, still in the boondocks of the county.

The “boondocks” of a county is an ephemeral term. Places in the east that used to be considered rural—where cows, sheep and chickens once roamed, if not deer and antelope—are now part of a continuous ribbon of urban development that stretches from north of Boston all along I-95 to southern Florida. While driving that interstate, you never know when you have passes from one city or town into another. And you are never more than a few hundred yards from a fast food restaurant.

I have seen huge hotels and expressways in the Dallas, TX, area where 40 years ago friends of mine helped herd longhorns.

I have seen areas in the East and Midwest where either I or friends were once able to put up targets a 100 yards or more away and fire our .30-06 rifles that are now jammed with new housing developments in subdivisions where you couldn’t even shoot an airgun these days.

Today, in much of the country east of the Mississippi it is pretty hard to find a range with anything more than 100-yard rifle firing points. Yes, there is still some varmint hunting for woodchucks, but the available farms that will welcome or even allow you to shoot them is getting increasingly rare. A 1,000-yard range is a real find, and even a 300-yard range is a rarity.

Finally, I have observed the development Western states that is discussed in Turner’s column in this issue, particularly outside Las Vegas. Over the last 15 years or so, I have watched the road to the Desert Sportsmen’s Range—once way outside the city in barren desert, with wild burros roaming around—become filled with new residential and commercial development. And that even includes in the past couple of years, the Red Rock Station Casino and Hotel.

A couple of years ago, we even found a fancy bakery and catering firm on that road close enough to agree to deliver lunch for a crowd out at the range.

Money is the core of the problem. Lands that were once “dirt cheap” suddenly escalate in value. Land values keep going up as demand increases. And if it is not because of new residential, commercial or industrial development, it’s because a new superhighway, new mining or oil and gas drilling or pipelines is being built.

If gunowners—especially those with a good shooting venue or club—don’t get involved in every aspect of the planning and zoning of these areas, they will find themselves locked out, with nowhere for them or their children to shoot.
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