I’ve been putting the notices up at the range. I pass by every day on my way to work and have checked on it every few since the first notice was posted there three weeks ago. After the first sign was taken down I was pretty discouraged, trying to imagine why anyone would do that. Then, it became more of a challenge. On one of the Saturdays I was there first thing to the morning to check on the signs and saw a group of people with shotguns and targets, but they were raking up shells and cardboard in the shotgun area, and bagging it before beginning their shooting session. Those are the people who give me the motivation to pursue this. The county can afford a whole pile of laminated signs and I’m stubborn enough to keep to keep pace with the asshole that keeps tearing them down. Perhaps it is someone who shoots there every Sunday morning and thinks he is going to prevent the clean-up from happening. If so, he will get a rude surprise, since we will have much larger plywood signs that morning notifying of the range closure and law enforcement personnel there to enforce it.
The state has promised to arrange for a dumpster and I have done the volunteer recruiting and publicizing through the county parks. I expected that the dumpster would have been placed there by now and will have to check with my counterpart at the state tomorrow to make sure it hasn’t been placed in the wrong location by a lost truck driver! So far I’ve had two different scout troops having members that use the range offer to be there, as well as several individuals.
Kevin is absolutely right in regard to how things are at the state level. Their field staff were spread far too thin before this economic mess and things are only worse now. And I can vouch that things on the county level are only slightly better. But it does help to be based closer to the problem. More cooperative ventures such as this are in the works. Pete McLain has approached me with an idea of an arrangement with the state where the county parks will assist in managing Webbs Mill Bog. Beaver have been consistently flooding the are and that significant habitat is at risk. With our office about fifteen minutes away, we are in a better position to monitor and rectify the situation than the state is. Stay tuned for that one.
It would be interesting to put a 'Range' cam out there.....
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