From dump to shooting range
<p>Bob Smith, director of Fernan Rod and Gun Club, looks down range of one of eight shooting ranges on Tuesday at the club's Fernan location.</p>
<p>Bob Smith, director of Fernan Rod and Gun Club, walks on a 400-yard rifle range on Tuesday as he demonstrates the safety features of the shooting bay at the club's Fernan location.</p>
<p>Bob Smith tests the safety alarms installed in the rifle range shooting bay on Monday at the Fernan Rod and Gun Club's Fernan location. Alarms sound and red lights turn on if someone steps onto the range, alerting other shooters to cease fire.</p>
Bob Smith started the Fernan Rod and Gun Club in 1990 as a solution to clean up an informal shooting range and to start a club that enabled people to shoot in a safe environment. Now, two and a half decades later, the popular shooting range is trying to secure a 20-year special use permit so it can stay open for all the people who love it.
The club, 5 miles outside Coeur d’Alene on Fernan Lake Road is on a site people used to use for target practice and as a general dump. Smith described the old site as being similar to the way Hayden Creek is now, but “10 times worse.” Littered with microwaves, refrigerators, piles of trash and lots of bullet shells, the area was in bad shape.
In 1989, Smith came to an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service that a firearms safety and self-defense school Smith owns could have a special use permit for the area as long as his company kept the area clean and safe.
Only one year later, Smith started the Fernan Rod and Gun Club and the Forest Service agreed to permit the land to the club, instead of the school. The gun club would be able to have a shooting facility for federal and state agencies to train and practice and where members of the club and the public could shoot their guns.
Since then, the club has operated on shorter term special use permits. Now the Forest Service is currently helping the Fernan gun club write a proposal for the 20-year special use permit it is trying to secure. The club is also in the middle of conducting the mandatory environmental impact study to see if it is feasible for the club to operate for a longer period of time.
“Over the last few years we’ve been working hand in hand with them, working on making improvements on their proposal and bringing it up to standards with the Forest Service regulatory agencies,” said Ryan Foote, deputy district ranger for the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. “The last two or three years we’ve made a lot of good strides to make a proposal we can move forward with.”
The largest NRA affiliate in the state and the only joint civilian, military and police range on federal property in the state, the Fernan gun club features eight multi-use bays, a rifle line and a structure where police and federal agencies can practice entering a building.
Club membership is required to use the facilities except on days it opens up to the public, which is usually on weekends.
Smith started to visualize the long-term permit about seven years ago. He has been frustrated by the process and cost of getting it, but is glad the end is in sight.
He estimates the process has cost the club about $300,000 — $100,000 in cash, $100,000 in man hours and another $100,000 the club received in grants that it had to give back because the club didn’t use the money within the timeframe it was supposed to.
Due to the costs of this new permit, Smith said the club has started to have to charge everyone who uses the facility, even if it is just a small amount.
“We have had to pay for part of this process, it has cost our club to do this,” Smith said. “The alternative is what you have happening in Hayden Creek.”
The permit is expected to be signed within the next six or seven months.
If the new permit does not go through, Smith has little hope of maintaining the club. He said he is tired and ready to move on to other things in life. He also said the club has lost a lot of volunteers willing to spend time mowing the lawn or keeping the place in good condition.
“Should this be gone, we would tear everything down because if we don’t, someone will come in, start a fire, burn everything down and leave it destroyed,” Smith said. “We’ll take the gate down too.”
Smith desperately does not want to see the area revert back to the dump it used to be because he has worked so hard to make it what it is today.
He also realizes the importance of the Fernan shooting facility to so many different people. The club is by no means lacking in members and, according to Smith, is the only place left in the area that federal and police agencies can use for certain types of training and meeting admission requirements.
When Smith read about the efforts to clean up Hayden Creek, he was reminded of himself. He hopes someone else will take a page out of his book and turn a dump into a great shooting range. Above all, we wants to showcase how hard work can really turn a place around.