Improving the Dartmouth Range

Dartmouth has long been the most rustic member of the Ivy League. While many of the Ancient Eight conjure up images of reading Milton in musty libraries, the northernmost Ivy has always been a place where students take their Hemingway with hiking, and their Chinese with canoeing. It is in that spirit that Dartmouth offers a set of unique resources among private colleges—a shooting range and an on-campus firearm storage facility. As gun ownership has become less and less popular, especially among the younger generations, the College’s facilitation of responsible sportsmen and shooting enthusiasts has become a much-appreciated and little-known secret on campus. But for the benefit of the greater community of shotgunners and riflemen, gradual improvements to the range and the firearms storage-system would be much appreciated. Most directly, this would mean an increase in the accessibility of the College’s resources, which would lead to greater interest in safe, responsible shooting. While those of us who use the range and the storage enjoy a system functional for the small number of students who know about it, we are committed to seeing a system at Dartmouth that would allow the sport shooting community to grow for years to come.

Reserving the range is a process which needs a fair amount of streamlining. In order to get a time to shoot, you have to appear in person at the Safety and Security headquarters, located on the far side of Campus near Occom Pond and McLaughlin. After declaring your intentions to the officers stationed at the desk (who tend to be quite friendly and accommodating), they will announce whether the range is occupied, or if you can proceed. This system creates a multitude of headaches, as your chances of reserving the range are entirely left to chance. If you show up right after another group has gone out, it may take more than two hours, ruining plans you may have made for another part of the day. On busy shooting days, the uncertainty of availability can be a serious headache. This is a system that clearly needs a fix, and luckily there is one, although it comes with a catch. Leaders of Bait and Bullet, the Dartmouth club which introduces students to the lifelong pursuits of hunting and sport shooting, may call ahead and reserve the range through the telephone. This merits of this system over the other are clear. However, it remains unclear why this privilege is not extended to other students. Dartmouth students who have firearms stored with the college must be certified in firearms safety, usually through the completion of a hunter safety course. Although Bait and Bullet leaders undergo DOC training and leadership courses, they have no additional gun safety training than any other person qualified to reserve the range. Allowing all students to call and arrange range times would make for greater efficiency and accessibility, while retaining high standards for safety. Another possible solution would be a reservation system modeled on the one used to reserve Baker-Berry study rooms, allowing certified shooters to reserve their times electronically.

In addition to the difficulty most students face to reserve the range, the range itself has some major deficiencies. Many of these are related to its topography—the range is a small field surrounded on all sides by steep hills. All nearby water flows down into this field, turning it into a swamp during most parts of the year. The area around the shooting bench and clay throwers is covered in gravel, protecting sportsmen from the worst of the mud.

The swampy field is a major problem for rifle shooting. The range has no permanent targets or target stands, so its users must go out into the mud and standing water to place their targets, to check if they are shooting well or if their rifle is zeroed properly, and to replace their old target with a new one. For those unfamiliar with shooting, paper targets need to be replaced fairly often to still offer a sportsman useful information about his rifle’s or his own performance.  All of this adds up to a large amount of time spent slogging through deep mud and trying to step around frequent pools of standing water.  Unfortunately, a major side effect of how wet the Dartmouth range is that it is a major breeding ground for ticks; during tick season, almost every person who visits the range will find a tick on them afterwards.

There is a simple solution to this problem—steel targets. Steel targets can be left outside for a long time, and make a ringing noise when hit. This means that riflemen and women no longer need to place or retrieve targets, since steel targets can be left in position for long periods of time. And, rather than having to walk up to their paper target to see where the holes are, steel offers an auditory cue to tell if a target has been hit or not.  Bait and Bullet is currently considering purchasing and setting up steel targets at the range, which should eliminate some of the problems present with paper targets.

Another issue with the range is its lack of distance markings. Rifles typically need to be zeroed a specific distance to achieve the good first-shot accuracy needed for hunting. Since there are no known distances marked at the range, a rifle’s zero can only be as good as its user’s ability to guess an unknown distance. Additionally, having known distances marked on the range can help new shooters judge their progress in improving their accuracy at a specific distance. One possible solution to this issue is to measure out ten, twenty-five, and fifty yards and place a post with a sign for that distance at each spot.

Dartmouth’s range provides its students with a unique opportunity to get involved or continue their involvement in the sport shooting. Dartmouth is to be lauded for simply having a range, but the range definitely has problems: a time-consuming reservation system, swampy topography, and no way to know the distance to a target. Bait and Bullet has recognized some of these issues, and is in the process of attempting to improve the range with steel targets. In addition, Bait and Bullet is trying to reach an agreement with a local range in Lebanon to allow Dartmouth students to purchase a membership. This attempt may or may not be successful, but it could provide an alternative to the Dartmouth range that, while less conveniently located, has better facilities.