Thread: The future of Rifle Ranges.

Greetings All,
There has been a lot of chatter lately on the future of Rifle Ranges. Some range operators seem to be on the ball and some seem to be in denial. It will be illegal to shoot on a unregistered (there is an exception for ranges for which registration has been applied for) range from mid year. I thought I had a good understanding of what was required but in the interest of science I had a look at a couple of examples.
The danger area template for the .308 up to 8mm cartridges was plotted on an scaled photograph of a place of interest. It was very interesting, the 100 metre range was just a tiny patch in one corner. The danger area is 2.9km long and 900 metres wide at its widest and included one public road. Obviously there are very few ranges with this much land. The range manual also allows for reduced and no danger area ranges. This requires a tall and steep topographical feature (hill) to serve as a backstop. Next the template was applied to the area I occasionally use for sighting in at home. This rises steeply to the back of the site and the targets are placed in the floor of a gulley with a steep face at the end.
My concern is that, to my knowledge, there seems to be no effective effort to have a general centre fire range registered in Hawkes Bay. The crunch date, again from memory, is 23 June. How is it going in your area?
Regards Grandpamac.