by Chuck Papp, Delray Shooting Center
Well in a few short weeks it will be all over till the fall. Once again, another season has come and gone. From the looks of it on the social media sites it appears to have been a good one. Now most of the information I have been seeing is from the central to northern part of the state. It seems there have been some game taken out of WMA’s down here but not a lot. There is a lot of hunting pressure some of them get and the animals know it. Their nocturnal switch comes on and that’s when they come out.
The real big news for this summer will be the opening of the new shooting facility off the old Mecca Farms property out in the Loxahatchee area. This has been some time now in the making, but I can tell you for a fact that the construction is on the way and the last I heard was that the rifle/pistol side will be open, or should be as they say by June.
People have asked me why would I be in favor of a new range since I have been working at the ones owned by small businesses in the area, generally I wouldn’t, but this is a state facility and it will mean one thing for us: more gun sales!! People can now have a place to go shoot their rifles at, and or buy rifles because now they have a real 100 to 300-yard rifle range to shoot at that’s not an hour and a half away. The handgun shooters aren’t driving more than 20 minutes to find a range close to them, but now the hunters, and rifle shooters will now have a place in this county to go to. One of the main factors in which someone doesn’t buy or own a rifle is because there was no real rifle range, now there will be.
So, this summer/fall will be one that may go by a little faster now that there will be a rifle range in which the hunter can now go practice, and we can sell more rifles now to people who always wanted one but didn’t have a range to use it at that was close by.