I thought it would be fun to tell of wondrous things we have seen at public ranges.

One of my experiences: I was walking down the trail to the range, while a young man, with his father trailing him walked straight at me repeatedly levering his 30-30 and pulling the trigger while the rifle was pointing directly at my middle. He never looked up or saw me. He was looking at his rifle the whole time. After the 6th or 8th snap we both assumed the rifle was clear. This all of course happened in seconds.

Some years ago I was at a gun shop that had a range behind the store. If you bought ammo from them you could shoot it there. It was a week before deer season and a father, and his teen age son set up, and the father took the first shot from the bench with his scoped rifle. No sooner than the first shot rang out the father let out a great big ouch. He looked at his son and asked him where did it get me? Without a moment delay the son said It's the same place it got ya last year.

A. J. Palik

No public range for me either. Not because of some scary event but just because of where I live there is no need for a public range.  Dell Montana.

Many years ago, maybe 5 BSS (before single shots), I went to a store with an indoor range to try out a couple of 9mm pistols.  Handloads were prohibited except for the ones they sold.  The S&W 669 I rented would not cycle with their ammo.  When I took it back to the counter, the guy very sheepishly took back the ammo and said "Here, try this 9mm.  The 380 we sold you was a screw up"

Another time maybe 40 years ago now, at the same range as above, another weird incident happened.

I was shooting solo at the rifle benches and a friendly stranger was shooting down on the 25 yard pistol range. Said fella walked down to me to chat during a lull, then promptly packed up his gear and left with a friendly wave. Later while I was packing up to leave I noticed an object laying at the firing point he had been using. Sure enough he drove away and left his pistol behind, a dandy S&W M39 9mm.

I had no idea as to who he was, and after waiting for an hour for his frantic return which didn't happen, I scooped it up and departed. My only clue as to his identity was his mentioning a local sporting goods store in which he did business. A visit to said store paid off when I proffered his description to a clerk who said "Ah, that's so-and-so". The gun was left securely in their possession, the rightful owner was contacted, and all ended well - followed by a nice phone call from the absent-minded gun owner who thanked me profusely.

Fast forward a couple months and I read a sensational story in the local paper about a guy who got in a terrible argument with his wife who proceeded to Swiss cheese him with his own 9mm pistol and then administered a coup de gras with an empty champagne bottle. You guessed it, it was my guy and it turned out that the murder weapon was the self-same S&W M39. I often wondered if I had been a schmuck and kept quiet about that pistol after finding it at the range if the poor guy would be alive today, but then I wake up and realize that empty champagne bottles in the hands of irate wives are evidently equally dangerous and it wouldn't have mattered.

I have a public range just a few minutes from my house but I stopped using it. It had gotten too dangerous. I will now drive 55 miles to my club to shoot. Don't have to worry about stupid people doing stupid things endangering your life.


JMH

At our club's indoor range and meeting room there's a table full of things guys have left at the range! Maybe 3-4 sets of ear muffs, probably a half dozen rifle or pistol cases, various articles of clothing, cleaning kits, etc. They're piled there with a sign that reads, "Lost and found, not free to take!"
I've never seen anything gone off the table; the pile just keeps growing.

This is a sore story with me and still bumps up my blood pressure recalling it. In 1989 I was a member and frequent shooter at Pelham Fish & Game in Southern NH. Big club with several ranges on a big piece of property. You had to drive to each range and weekends and sanctioned shoots there was always one of five Range Officers attending them. I was shooting and chronographing some Ackley loads. When I got set up there were only four of the twenty benches in use. After an hour or so I was the last there with my dogs in the truck. I recall two guys coming over and asking about my rifles and spotting scope then they left. 

I went down range to pull two targets at the 200 yard berm. A bit of a walk and I'm slow. When I got back to my bench both my rifles, their cases and my Kowa scope were gone. I was in a state of shock and for minutes couldn't fathom what to do. I picked up the range phone and told the resident Range Officer to get over pronto. Told him the circumstances and he called the police. 

There were a number of cameras around the range and gate but the images showed nobody suspicious at my range and only one pickup going out through the gate but the photos couldn't resolve the license plate number and there were several places a car could park where the camera wouldn't catch it. Police made a report and told me recovery was a long shot but this had happened at a couple other ranges in the past six months. My insurance policy would not cover my loss since it was not on my property.  Still bums me out something fierce and in thinking about it a theft like this isn't hard to pull off. Had the other members locked the gate going out like the rules state it may not have happened. 

Rick

Our club requires each member to do 18-hours a year   of service time. One way to satisfy that requirement is to  serve as a RSO (Range Safety Officer. I joined in 1978.

In the early ‘80’s the club was open to the public and I was an RSO. There were (3) guys attempting to sight in a Remington 700 (.30-06) @ 100 yards. They didn’t look like they were having much luck hitting their target. 

After a brief time I happened to look behind the firing line. There the (3) of them were, standing by a tree. They had the barrel of the rifle in the notch of the fork of the tree, looking like the brainstorm was to “bend” the barrel to improve its accuracy. 

Before they were at it long enough to break the stock I stopped them. Don’t know if they were strong enough to influence the position of the barrel but I didn’t want to know.   

I told them to pack-up, gave them their range fee back and asked them to leave and not come back to our range. I told them that what they were trying do would not solve any accuracy issues and what they were doing was a huge safety concern. No way was I going try to sight-in their rifle for them. Besides that not being something the RSO should do, there was also a personal safety thing, at least for me.

These (3) guys appeared to have a common foreign country lineage. That part of the world will remain nameless.

The lesson for me was whenever out @ the range ALWAYS look around, because you never know….

Tom

We open up our range every fall for three weekends before hunting season, and charge the public to sight in their hunting rifles. We try to have one member for each shooter to maintain safety and guide shooters through the process. 
Some shooters are well prepared and don't take long to get their rifles sighted in. Others have brand new guns and scopes, and have not even bore sighted them, so it takes forever to get them on paper. And some are such poor shots that even when they have an accurate setup I wonder how they'll ever bring home any game?
We've had numerous cases of a shooter showing up with the wrong ammo, so we have to do everything we can to try and make sure the cartridge is correct for the rifle they brought to shoot. Had one guy bring a .30-06 rifle and .308 ammo once. He couldn't figure out why his gun wouldn't shoot well, and why brass had blown out the first shot he fired! He was adamant that he'd fired the same ammo in it before.

Burntwater, Sorry to hear your rifles were stolen. That's some thing that always concerned me. If there is some one on the line I know and trust, I'll leave my rifle on the bench when I go down range. If I'm alone especially I'll carry the hardware with me. Ain't it a shame.

We had to drive an antelope (OK, pronghorn) off the grass in front of the 200 meter berm.

When we have the ISSA Int'l Matches on the Whittington Center Coors range in Raton each summer we hire a lookout to keep watch for game around the targets.  We get a lot of Elk and white tail.  I've heard that there have even been bears in the past (before my time).

Two years ago we had a pronghorn who wandered across the line between the benches and the 100 yard line during one of the matches.  He was chased off.  A few minutes later he came back.  Chased away again.  Repeat.  The I think it was the fourth time one of the guys took his electric bicycle and chased him a long way off.   

I finally thought of something amazing I saw at a rifle range. To me it was amazing, maybe only to me. It was at the rifle range in Golden in either 1986 or 88. I was watching Lones Wigger getting ready to shoot. Lones was so nervous and shaky he could hardly handle simple tasks at his bench. After a couple minutes he left and went down to the concession stand and got a cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake, sat down at a table and quietly consumed his coffee and cake. He then went back up to his bench, calmly sat down and proceeded to kick everyones ass. I remember wondering what he could have been so nervous about.

I shot a NRA Midrange match at van Meter, IA. We were shooting at 600 yds with scopes. All of sudden something appeared in my scope. Little heads were popping up in the scope. Turkeys were feeding in front of the 300 yd firing points. The bullets passing above them didn’t bother them.

For several months a fox had a den in the 100 yard berm. 
Shooters were careful to avoid it as it went back and forth.
One day someone shot it and bragged about it. Thought I was going to see a lynching. Shooter was expelled from the club.
Chuck

Many years ago, I belonged to Brea R&P Club, which was owned by Union 76, one morning the target boys came running back 'cause they told us that there were two crazy deer in the pits. What had happened was that two bucks were fighting and had fallen into the target pit and were wildeyed. What the boys did was to tie a rope onto the pit door so they could pull the door open at a distance and run. When they opened the doors the two bucks shot out of the pit in a big hurry!

Another amazing thing I saw at a range was at Tacoma. The day Roland Groppe claimed an alibi on a deflected bullet caused by hitting a honey bee. Roland actually found the remains of the bee in the grass in front of his bench. I remember Roland holding it in front of Chuck Bordmans face as they yelled at each other. 

That was back in the days when we had two or three relays, started at 9 AM and shot till it got so dark we couldn't see the targets any longer.

Another amazing thing that happened at Tacoma was when Jack won a King target with a big ole BP musket rifle. I would guess that every year for five years Jack would bring that target to the matches and show it to me. Every year he would track me down, show me that King target and say "look at the size of that hole Joe" real loud. I bet he still has the target. 
Show us that big ole hole in that target, Jack.

My God! Look at the size of that bullet hole, Jack!