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Longest Rifle Range

Tackdriver said:
I believe it is Reading at 600 yrds.

Dave
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Yup, Reading.

rangoon said:
Does a 1000yrd range exist in New England?
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Forbes Rifle & Pistol Club in Guilderland, NY. Pemigewasset Valley Fish & Game Club is working on one, but I don't think they have a schedule yet for when it will be open.

I believe that Fort Devens has one (Hotel Range), but I believe that the Fort Devens Gun Club doesn't exist anymore.
 
M1911 said:
I believe that Fort Devens has one (Hotel Range), but I believe that the Fort Devens Gun Club doesn't exist anymore.
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I live in Harvard and have never heard of this, also they have active military training on the range very frequently so I doubt they would be open to the public.
 
perry1386 said:
I live in Harvard and have never heard of this, also they have active military training on the range very frequently so I doubt they would be open to the public.
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Prior to 9/11, I was a member of the Fort Deven's Gun Club, and as a member of the general public (not military or police), I shot a number of times on Golf and Hotel ranges. To join the club, you had to pass a written test to become a range safety officer, but it wasn't hard. Also, the gun club held High Power rifle competitions on Golf range at 200, 300, and 600 yards. You didn't have to be a member of the Fort Deven's Gun Club to attend those competitions. You just had to sign it at the gate.
 
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M1911 said:
Prior to 9/11, I was a member of the Fort Deven's Gun Club, and as a member of the general public (not military or police), I shot a number of times on Golf and Hotel ranges. To join the club, you had to pass a written test to become a range safety officer, but it wasn't hard. Also, the gun club held High Power rifle competitions on Golf range at 200, 300, and 600 yards. You didn't have to be a member of the Fort Deven's Gun Club to attend those competitions. You just had to sign it at the gate.
Click to expand...

I was too young and not into shooting at all back then so I guess I wouldn't have known, thanks for the info
 
Speaking of Google Earth, if you look at the Pemi, you can see where they have cleared for the 1000 yard range.

B
 
Arto said:
the Fort Devens Club is alive & well
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Really? Do you have contact info? Can the ranges be used outside of competitions?

At one point, the road from the gate to Golf range was closed because was too close to the ammo bunkers. As a result, you had to drive all the way around the base and to limit traffic, they no longer allowed personal vehicles on the base. Did they get that resolved?
 
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they shoot 1 Tuesday morning a month if it's not needed for training.
It's a small group, no internet/website - they shoot in the NEHP league matches
 
here's the address:
Ft Devens Rifle & Pistol Club Inc
P.O. Box 149
Still River, MA 01467
 
bpm990d said:
Speaking of Google Earth, if you look at the Pemi, you can see where they have cleared for the 1000 yard range.
Click to expand...

They have it cleared but hit a roadblock of anti's in the town.

An Email from the club president,

This note is going out to all of you who responded to a set of questions
I posed about the Pemi Fish and Game’s plans to build a 1,000-yard rifle
range on its grounds in Holderness, NH. Geez, it’s been two years ago or so
now. First, thanks for taking the time to send your thoughts. Second, I
apologize for not sending out updates; things always seemed on the verge of
something notable, and waiting a week or so would allow me to include
something significant. Well, “a couple of weeks” turned into a couple of
months which has turned into a year and a half or more.

Let’s cut to the chase, and then backtrack a little to fill in the
history.

Our request for a variance from the Town of Holderness was denied at the
March, 2012, meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals. The project is on hold
until we can come up with a plan that will get around this.

To see how we got here, let’s take a step back to January, 2011. We had
been working with an engineering firm (as well as a wetlands scientist and a
surveyor) to come up with a detailed plan for the range layout, and in
January we were pretty much ready to start working on the permits that the
town and state would require.

From the state we’d need an Alteration of Terrain permit for disturbing
over 2+ acres. This is cut-and-dried. We ran a sketch of the range past a
couple of the state folks who would review the project when formally
submitted and they didn’t see any problems. Good so far. But the town okay
was needed first.

From the town, we were told (in an e-mail that seemed awfully casual)
that we would need a use variance. We figured, okay, that’s easy: it should
be a no-brainer because the impact of the new range would be minimal on the
land itself – there’d be no wetlands disturbance at all – and we’d be moving
a good amount of the high power shooting over a half mile farther from the
neighbors. We dutifully prepared the variance and scheduled a hearing with
the town. We went into this thinking that this was going to be easy. That
was a mistake.

Some neighbors showed up at the first hearing, and one even brought a
lawyer. We quickly realized that maybe this wasn’t going to be a simple
matter, and the Club hired a lawyer of its own. The first request our lawyer
put to the town was to ask it to formally decide whether we really needed a
variance in the first place, since he thought we probably didn’t. This is
now the summer of 2011. The town rejected making a decision, claiming that
that informal e-mail back in January had been a formal decision and that we
didn’t appeal it then. An e-mail, to the engineer hired by the club and not
even to any club officer, saying “I think you need a use variance”
apparently constitutes a binding decision. To say we were surprised and
aghast at this would be an understatement.

We still thought that the case for the new range was good, so we pressed
ahead on the variance. It took a number of Zoning Board meetings. We were
“treated” to a variety of objections to the new range, most of which were as
silly as they were irrelevant (“we find beer cans on Beede Road so it must
be Pemi members littering”) or based on irrational fears (“terrorists could
be training at the new range!” … yes, one of our neighbors actually said
that) or based on ignorance about firearms (“they’ll be shooting cannons”
and “the noise” — even from a half mile away — “ will be deafening”). The
usual arguments about traffic, noise, and property values were trotted out.

In the end, the Zoning Board sided with the antis, and our variance
request was denied at the March, 2012, ZBA meeting. Skipping over some
procedural details, this decision left us with the choice of appealing the
decision to NH Superior Court or accepting their decision and dropping the
project. After a serious debate by the Club’s board of directors, it was
decided in July to not appeal. The amount of money involved in an appeal
plus the time and energy that would be required to pursue it — and given the
uncertainty of the outcome — all weighed against going ahead. Everyone on
the board was very disappointed with this outcome no matter what their vote
had been.

We haven’t given up, and there’s a committee chartered by the board to
explore various options. Certainly nothing visible will happen in the short
run, but we will continue to try to correct the half-truths and
exaggerations and to convince neighbors and town officials that it really is
a win-win. Changing the minds of people with strongly held pre-conceived
ideas is a bit of a challenge, though, so this will take time.

If you spread the word, I'd appreciate it.

Oh! By the way, here’s something you might be interested in knowing: One
of our abutters who was instrumental in blocking the variance happens to be
the owner of the Common Man restaurant chain. You might want to consider
whether you want your entertainment dollars ending up in the pockets of an
anti-gunner.


-Randy
Click to expand...
 
One of our abutters who was instrumental in blocking the variance happens to be the owner of the Common Man restaurant chain. You might want to consider whether you want your entertainment dollars ending up in the pockets of an anti-gunner.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Not one more cent.
 
Yes, the common man restaurants will never see 1 cent from me and hopefully from no one.
 
I had missed this. Prior to reading this, I had already decided that Common Man had become rather uncommon. Last visit was Lincoln. Food sucked, prices were uncommonly high, and the service was uncommonly slow.

Ad that to the stance of the owner, it is now cast in stone. No more.
 
jasons said:
Indeed. Not one more cent.
Click to expand...


Never cared for the Common Man, the Tilton Diner is a schithole, and I have a friend who rented a building from him and it was nothing but lies and broken contracts from the Common Man's owner, even caught one of the CM's employees on company time and at the direction of the CM owner stealing stuff from the building when they were moving out.

The video sealed the court case....
 

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