Are you new to archery and looking for a place where you can safely practice your shot? One thing that bothers archers all over the world is having a brand new bow on a sunny day, with no place to shoot it.
There are some places close to you where you might be able to practice your shot, that you may have never thought of. We’ll cover a few of the more traditional spots, as well as some that are a bit more out of the box.
Obviously your local archery range (if you have one nearby) should be your number one, go to spot. If you’re not sure if there is an outdoor archery range in your home town, you should be able to find out in a couple of minutes by searching online. If you’re absolutely brand new to archery, you should read this before you go shooting for your first time – it’s a plus for the safety of everyone involved.
Many archery ranges just charge you a small lane or shooting fee per hour, or for a block of hours at a time. These ranges are usually pretty affordable and laid back, so hopefully there’s a local outdoor range near you.
Your Local Archery Shop
Many local archery shops have a few indoor shooting lanes that they have for potential customers to use to test out their bows. Some local shops will even have a full indoor archery range. You may be able to use them to practice your shot, if you can work something out with the owner.
There are some small, local archery shops where there are just a few people hanging out and talking all day. These are the really laid back, hobby type businesses, usually owned by one person – who has all of his friends as his workers.
If you’ve got one of these laid back shops in your area, you may be in luck. These types of shops are perfect for letting you hang out and shoot for free – if they like you. So start talking with the people there and after a while you might just be “one of the guys”.
If you’ve got one of the more professional, business driven type archery shops in your area, you could offer them a fee for using one of their shooting lanes. Visit the store first to see just how many lanes they have.
If they have more than two shooting lanes, there’s a good chance they’ve always got a lane free for you to use, and the shop’s owner probably knows this. Offer them a reasonable price to shoot in one of their lanes for an hour or two a week.
You may even find an archery shop that will let people shoot for free, if you’re willing to shoot after business hours. It doesn’t hurt to ask so, get in contact will any local shops near you and ask them.
Local Archery Clubs
There are lots of local archery clubs all across the country that don’t have any outdoor, but do have indoor shooting available. Because they don’t have outdoor shooting ranges, you may have one in your area and not even know it.
In my area there’s a club in a nearby town that has one of it’s largest 3D archery shoots in February of every year. I had no idea that they were around and would have thought that there was no where to shoot – as February is not a month you want to shoot outdoors in the North East.
So do a search for any local archery clubs that may be in your area. Remember not only to search for “clubs”, but also search for 3D archery clubs. Many of these 3D archery clubs are smaller clubs, that don’t have large outdoor shooting ranges.
Many of these clubs will just rent or lease a good size building and shoot indoors.
High Schools
Many high schools these days either have an archery program, or may at least have archery as a small part of their fitness curriculum. Get in touch with them and find the right person to ask if they have any facilities that you can use.
You may be able to use them in off hours, so if they give you the green light – be prepared to shoot nights and weekends.
If nothing else, you may be able to get permission to use their other fields for archery practice. All high schools (that I’m aware of) have large open areas of land, whether it be for football, track or other outdoor sports.
Get in touch with the person in charge of these and ask if there are any free times that you can use them. Remember, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Colleges and Universities
Like high schools, many colleges have excellent facilities, specifically intended just for use in archery. Finding the right person to give you permission to use them can be a bit more tricky than at high schools, though.
The larger the University, the more potential people you’ll have to contact to get permission to use there facilities, but it may be well worth it. Large universities usually have very impressive and just all around great places to practice your shot so don’t blow them off.
City / Town Parks
This one is going to vary a lot from city to city so do your due diligence before you pack you bow and gear into the car!
There are many cities, towns, counties and municipalities across the country in which it’s perfectly fine to shoot your bow, providing you keep safety in mind. You’ll have to check with your local city or town and see if it’s OK to shoot your bow there at all, before you go about finding a park to shoot in.
If it’s alright to shoot in your general area, you can then start looking to see if there’s an appropriate park to shoot in. Be aware however: There are some places where it’s OK to shoot in that town – but NOT in public parks in that town.
That means if you owned land in that town, you could shoot on that land, but you couldn’t shoot in any public parks in that town.
As I said before, be very diligent in your research and ask as many local city / town workers as possible before you even consider shooting. You want to be one hundred percent sure that you are OK and have permission to shoot.
If you are in an area with a park that you can shoot it, remember safety first! Even if you’re in a remote part of the park where you don’t think anyone else will be, you never know. Always keep an eye out for other people and their pets, you never know if there’s a hiker walking on one of those trails.
A good idea with these type of parks is to find a cliff face, and go to the bottom of it. If you’re shooting directly at the wall of a cliff, you’ve only got dirt and rocks as a backdrop to your target. That makes shooting much more safe.
Never shoot up into the air and never shoot over cliffs, ledges, or anywhere that could potentially drop down on anyone else. Keep safety first at all times.
Public Hunting / Shooting Land
In most states there is special land set aside specifically for hunting and fishing, that is intended for public use. This makes it possible for people who don’t own tons to land to still have somewhere that they can hunt.
Check to be sure first but, if it’s OK to hunt and shoot a gun in the area, it’s probably just fine to shoot a few arrows at an archery target.
Again, safety should always come first when you’re shooting on public recreational land. Always be on the lookout for other hunters, shooters and hikers and always wear bright, hunter safety colored clothing.
Friends / Family Land
If you have some friends or family that have any large plots of land or hunting land, ask them if there’s a corner of their land that you can use for archery practice. They may not mind at all if you use their land, especially in the off season when they’re not using it anyway.
If you know someone with a good size backyard, they may not mind you using their yard to practice archery. If they’re really nice, they might even let you set up your own backyard archery range on their land. While we’re at it, here’s a guide I wrote about setting up your own backyard archery range.
Outdoor Gun Range
There are many small outdoor gun ranges that are pretty laid back and wouldn’t mind you firing off a few arrows on their land.
A few towns over from me there’s a local family that has two or three shooting ranges set up on their land that they let the public use. People simply drive up, read a sign that lists all of the rules and make an optional donation in a lock box.
Look online to see if there are any of these in your area. A simple search for “your town shooting range” might just surprise you. I had always heard about the above family’s range by word of mouth, but when I did a search online – it came right up!
And we’re not talking about a business or anything, it’s literally just a field. I don’t even think the family created the listing for the range!
Even the more professional gun shooting ranges near you may not mind you shooting your bow at all, if you’re respectful of the rules of their range and shoot safely. Get a hold of the people running your local ranges and ask them.
Fairgrounds
Many cities and towns have a large area of land (public or privately owned) that are used as the town’s fairgrounds. Lots of times, these are used a bit frequently during the summer months, and rarely used during the winter.
Find out who owns and or runs your local fairground areas, as well as how to get in touch with them. Politely ask if there are any times that they would be OK with you doing a bit of practice shooting on their land.
Again, you may want to offer an appropriate fee if the land is privately owned. If it’s just sitting there empty and they’re not making any money on it anyway, they may just say yes.
Indoor 3D Archery Tournaments
Even if you’re not interested in 3D archery at all, you could use an indoor 3D shoot as just another place to practice shooting. These are big tournament shoots, much larger than the little indoor archery clubs described above. If it’s your first time, you may want to bring one of these – especially if you end up shooting in a scored class.
You will have to pay an entry fee, but they’re usually quite reasonable and you’ll get a lot of different 3D targets at different ranges to shoot. Plus, many 3D tournaments even have a special ‘non-scored’ class that costs less than the standard entry fee.
That’s because if you’re not keeping score, you’re not eligible to win any of the tournament prizes. If you’re only looking for a place to practice shoot anyway, go for it.
Besides, 3D archery is super fun, it’s one of my favorite things about archery. But beware, it can be addicting – you might just find that you’ve become a 3D archer at heart after your first shoot.
Here’s a guide I wrote about finding deals on cheap 3D archery targets, and if you’re interested in the best quality targets, I wrote this post about the best 3D archery targets for the money.
I hope that I’ve given you some ideas on places in your local area that you may have overlooked to shoot your bow. There are always little hidden gems of places that you can shoot, it’s just a matter of finding out where they are.
As I’ve said above there were two different places in my own area that anyone who was new to the area would never have known about, if they hadn’t looked online for them. So really make good use of the internet when it comes to searching out the little gem locations near you.
Ask every single person that you think might be helpful in your search – school workers,
parks and recreation staff, archery shop staff, absolutely anyone who may know of a place that you haven’t thought of.
I’ve given you quite a few potential ideas for places that you can shoot your bow, now it’s up to you to get out there and find them. Good luck in your search and have fun shooting!