Pass The Ammo

If there are any locals reading this, please consider sending a letter of support for the Farragut Park Shooting Range expansion project. Just received this letter from a supporter. It has a summary of the situation.

Farragut State park is on the south end of Lake Pend Oreille near Athol Idaho, a short distance north of Cour d’Alene. It was originally build as a Naval Training Station during World War II. They have a 1000 yard range at the park that was originally developed during the Naval Station days (I assume). The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has a plan to improve the range and make it usable for a wide variety of shooting sports. The Range developement plan outlined below explains that they want to partition the original range into several ranges. This will allow the range to be used for Highpower Competition simultaneously with shorter range events, and keep a plinking range open for the public too.

Apparently there is a small special interest group that is trying to stop the range inprovement and shut the range down for all shooting.

I wrote an e-mail to David Leptich, the manager of the project for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and asked for particulars about the range improvement plan. His response is what you will see below this message.

I would encourage you all to send an e-mail to Mr. Leptich expressing your support for their improvement project and keeping the range open. There are so very few full range ( 600 to 1000 yard ranges) available to us in the Northwest that we need to fight to keep all of them that are available. Hopefully they will get a group together to host some highpower matches there after the range improvment project is complete.

We need to think about it. Spokane is the closest 600 yard range that we have, and they do a great job of hosting matches.

But, remember, that there is a bicycly/pedestrian path 60 feet above the target pits at the Spokane Rifle Club. If something ever goes wrong at that range, WE ARE SCREWED (sorry ladies). Having a fully functional full distance range just a few miles into Idaho with attendant camping and recreational facilities for the non-shooters in the family might be our salvation.

In addtion, if they keep 15 firing points for a 600 year range, they would be able to host Black Power Cartridge Rifle matches, Silhouette Matches and more.

Please consider sending an e-mail in support of the improvements that are proposed by the Idaho Departmetn of Fish and Game. We should have as much support for range projects from the Washington Department of Fish and Game!

You can address a letter of support to David Leptich at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. His e-mail is dleptich@idfg.idaho.gov.

Thank you.