"If you build it, they will come" doesn't just apply to baseball fields carved out of Iowa farmland. As it turns out, its just as applicable to public ranges.
Last fall, South Dakota opened up a new shooting complex meant to attract both residents and non-residents, and so far it's been a booming success.
South Dakota’s new state-owned West River outdoor shooting range has had as many visits in five months as officials anticipated for its entire first year, according to an update Thursday.
The Pete Lien & Sons Shooting Sports Complex has logged more than 30,000 total visits since opening in early November.
In 2024, officials with Game, Fish and Parks guessed the site would see that many visits annually.
“We’re there in 5 months of operation,” the agency’s John Kanta said during a meeting of the state’s Game, Fish and Parks Commission.
Kanta said a rather mild winter helped. He said the complex has also sold 700 memberships and brought in nearly $100,000 in total sales.
Now, the complex cost about $20 million to build, so the state hasn't earned back all of its money in the first five months of operation, but that's to be expected. The unexpected good news is that the facility is on pace to more than double the number of anticipated visitors in its first year open to the public. The relatively mild winter was a boon for attendance in what's typically the slowest time of the year for outdoor shooting sports, and now that the spring is upon us and summer is on the horizon, the number of visitors is expected to really take off.
The 400-acre complex is roughly 15 miles north of Rapid City and 25 miles southeast of Sturgis. It includes areas for long-range shooting, clay target shooting and tactical training.
Shooting competitions are filling the calendar, officials said, with some events expected to draw hundreds of shooters, and law enforcement agencies regularly use the site for training.
Rising use will likely require more staffing, according to Wildlife Division Director Tom Kirschenmann.
That's good news too. More jobs is always a good thing, and the shooting competitions dotting the calendar over the next few months means more hotel rooms being occupied, more food being purchased in local restaurants, and more customers for local retailers as well.
We have a significant problem with range access in a lot of states, and though I don't expect the early success of the Pete Lien & Sons Shooting Sports Complex will lead to Democrats in blue states like Maryland or Massachusetts attempting to replicate South Dakota's efforts, Republican lawmakers in red states will hopefully sit up and take notice. I'd love to see similar complexes in states like Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Utah that would create regional destinations for competitive shooters. These facilities could even offer opportunities for more niche shooting sports like cowboy mounted shooting and Single Action Shooting Society events, which the South Dakota complex is missing.
There's a case to be made that states would be better off building a number of smaller ranges instead of one centrally-located complex, and ideally states would be constructing ranges big and small for the public to use. In terms of both promoting the shooting sports and serving as a part of a larger economic engine for communities, though, the bigger the better. South Dakota is showing that these facilities can be a big draw, and I hope that other states will soon follow suit.
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