New Shooting Facilities At Platte River State Park
That’s right! We are building several new shooting facilities for educational programming at Platte River State Park near Ashland. This has been an exciting endeavor and we should have the new facilities up and running by October of this year.
The new facilities will consist of an outdoor archery range, rifle/pistol range, trap range and indoor air gun shooting gallery. The rifle range will be a 50 yard facility with 12 benches and a nice overhead shade pavilion. The Archery range will have targets out to 60 yards with overhead shade pavilion and an elevated shooting blind! The trap ranges will accommodate new shooters wanting to learn how to shoot clays. The indoor pellet gun range will resemble a shooting gallery and should be fun for kids of all ages. Lots of details to work out still so stay tuned!
Get Em’ Out There
Rawly
The planning team standing on the archery range shooting pad
Moving dirt and shaping berms
New concrete pads that will become the shaded firing lines
Is this facility going to be open to the public,Or is it just for learning purposes.Either way,it looks like it’s going to be a nice range.
This has actually ruined our normal family vacations. We are a family of non shooters who came to the park for peace and quite and to ride and watch the horses. Can you tell me if the horses have their pasture back? There were a couple of cabins that we used to rent that the horses came right up to the back of. Are they still able to do this? Or is that option now gone? Please let me know as it will effect if we will be coming there or going to another park.
I notice most of the comments from admin are from the positive feedback from park users. I do not see any reference to my letter from last Oct at my surprise at the diggings behind the Red Barn. Still do not see how it will ever be the same.
We will forward your comments to Parks administration again and try to post an answer.
Sounds great. Will there be open shooting for the public or will there be a charge for shooting? There isn’t currently a place near me where I can go to shoot without paying for range time. Maybe this will offer a less expensive option and allow more people to get involved in recreational shooting activities. People need to practice and educate themselves for safe firearm use and this will be much more of an asset and will likely draw much more visitation to the park to benefit us all. Sorry if this inconveniences Michelle and her vacation plans, but there are a lot of other parks where she could stay. That would open up the cabin for someone that wants to have this rare and wonderful resource available to them. She may not visit, but I have not visited before, but will definitely start to in October.
There will be open shooting at the range for a very small fee. Prices and details are yet to be determined and the range will be open to the public Memorial Day weekend. Keep an eye out on the website for further details.
Gotta love state run institutions… campers will bill thrilled as there won’t be a sound to ruin your camping… shooters, not so much.
Just called and talked to the park on this and said the glorious range will be only for 22 Caliber guns provided by the park, yes provided by the park. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BRING YOUR OWN GUNS to shoot.
Jeez, someone should let these guys know they don’t need 50 foot thick berms to stop a 22LR. This is really great the state is helping beginners start to shoot and I am sure it will be a great training facility for families and youth groups, however, such a waste to do all this for just a rent a gun pellet range.
Initially we will be using .22’s provided by the range. We will be allowing the public to bring in their own guns at a later date. This is a new program for the park and we are still working on the details for the public use.
We cannot use our own firearms?! Who thinks up this stuff. I certainly hope no Pittman-Robertson act funds are being used for this project. Otherwise we have situation where weare paying for a facility by purchasing a firearm. Only to turn around and not be allowed by the state to use said firearm at the facility we just paid for.
the 5th of June my 9 year old son and i went to the range at Platte River State Park in the morning so he could shoot his first arrows. We had a great time! I coached him a little and the staff was VERY helpful in showing him proper technique.
the compound bows for the children are top notch equipment, this also may be one of the few chances your child may get to shoot a crossbow!
We can’t wait to return for more archery and to use the pellet range. I will probably use the rifle range to see if i’m still an expert marksman (thanks U.S. Army).
This is a great addition to the State Park system. I searched, in vain, for a public place to target shoot when I moved to Nebraska 19 years ago. I ended up joining the Eastern Nebraska Gun Club.
For the lady that claims that this has ruined her vacation; go to the park like normal and see for yourself if there is a significant impact before you denounce the changes.
This looks like a nice range but it seems very limiting. Does the NGPC have any ranges for centerfire rifle or plans to buid any? I just recently moved to Nebraska from Missouri and have been surprised by the lack of public shooting ranges in Nebraska.
I am so excited for a range that is closer to home that my children can go and be supervised by an adult to practice shooting their rifles. I am sure that there will be some people who dont appreciate it, but there is plenty of other camping areas that are around that can accommodate their “piece and quiet” for camping, I am sure that these are also the same people whose idea of camping is in a camper or a cabin, and not in a tent. So i m all for it the noise is not any louder than the trains that come thru so very often. As an old camper and past employee of YMCA Camp Kitaki, I am all for it! I think its about time.
called before christmas and a lady said that they would be closing for christmas and opening back up. the next week it was around 60 degrees, so i drove from omaha out to the park for the first time. went in to get my park pass and the raisin behind the desk told me that the range will not open back up till spring!!! i asked when and she said she didn’t know. go figure, the government (fed, state, or local) can’t do anything right!!! spend all the money and brag on it, then don’t staff it. idiots!
50 yards and can’t bring your own gun? who was the idiot who came up with this idea, probably the same guy who is in charge of the roads in omaha. stupid!
Just talked to the park today, and you can bring your own guns and bows. To bad it’s not open to shoot! Well, good to know for this spring/summer.
You mean to tell us we, the State of Nebraska taxpayers, can’t even shoot our local
handguns and rifles at this shooting range? It only took 100 years to get a outdoor range in the semi Omaha metro and it’s “restricted”? On top of that, it’s only for 2D (paper target) shooting and can not shoot basic 3D targets like bottles of bowling pins etc?
This is NEBRASKA, not Los Angeles or New York City.
No wonder everyone talks about going down I-29 to Missouri…
I just called the Park and they said you CAN bring your own guns and you can even bring fully automatic machine guns and .50 CAL Sniper Rifles and shoot them all day long if you want to! For the lady “whining” about shooters ruining her quiet, peaceful camping experience… go “F” yourself if you don’t like it!