Yellowstone shooting range to close June 5 for upgrades
FITCHBURG, Wis. ? The public shooting range at the Yellowstone Wildlife Area on County Highway F near Fayette in Lafayette County will be closed beginning June 5 for range safety improvements and addition of features that will provide accessible parking and shooting.
Backstops will be improved and berms constructed down the sides of all ranges for added safety. Plans also call for improving drainage, constructing a roof over all firing lines and installing new shooting benches.
MZ Construction, Inc., of Linden Wisconsin will do the work with an estimated completion date of August 1, 2013. The planned project cost of $210,000 will be funded with $185,000 from the federal Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act fund and a $25,000 grant from the National Rifle Association Range Grant Program
Enacted in 1937, Pittman-Robertson collects an excise tax on purchases of firearms, ammunition and archery equipment. Money is sent back to individual states and a portion of the dollars must be used to educate and train hunters through hunter safety classes and shooting ranges.
?This will be a great and welcome upgrade to the Yellowstone range,? said Bruce Folley, wildlife biologist with the Department of Natural Resources. ?Yellowstone is the only free shooting range found on public land for many miles around. It?s popular and has been showing its age for some time now. Currently, it does not offer accessible parking or shooting. Closure during the summer months will be inconvenient for some but it will be open in time for the fall hunting seasons and I think folks will really like the improvements.?
Project specifications call for recovering as much lead as possible from the existing backstops for recycling. For shooting options during the construction phase the National Shooting Sports Foundation maintains a list of shooting ranges at wheretoshoot.org.
