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Shooting Gallery at Wyoming Antelope Club
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Overview The Wyoming Antelope Club (in Pinellas County, Florida) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit shooting sports organization that includes several facilities that are open to the shooting public. Their newest facility, an "Old Time Shooting Gallery", is an attempt to safely recreate the shooting galleries that used to be common at circuses, carnivals, and county fairs throughout rural United States. Many of the club facilities are geared toward the experienced shooter, but this facility is designed, built, and operated with the stated purpose of safely introducing the public to the shooting sports. The Shooting Gallery was built 2010-2011 on the western edge of the club grounds using members for design and construction, and was paid for with club funds and a grant from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Any funds generated that are excess to maintenance needs are given to the club's Junior Shooters building fund. Gallery The "Old Time Shooting Gallery" was built to give the public a chance to experience the fun atmosphere of the last century's rural fairs, while at the same time keeping the public safe. The staff will provide gun (Henry lever-action .22 rifles), ammunition (.22 LR), eye protection, and ear protection. The staff will provide all instruction and safety measures necessary for anyone to shoot safely. Spectators are allowed to watch from behind or each side, but they also must wear eye and ear protection. The shooting stand consists of 7 individual stalls, each provided with a chair or stool and various types of rifle rests to allow any size of shooter to comfortably support their rifle. All shooters are required to sit while shooting, as part of the policies set up to ensure that all bullets enter the target enclosure. The target enclosure has a tilted backstop that reflects bullets downward to ensure there are no returns. The target enclosure contains a wide variety of target types, from simple paddle targets to wildlife silhouettes to moving "ducks". Most targets are reactive (they respond in some way to being struck, so the shooter can tell if they hit or not), including nine chain-drive moving target systems where the "duck" will fall backwards if hit; the target continues to follow the chain drive and is automatically reset before it is visible again on its next circuit. The target enclosure itself was built from a heavily reinforced standard CONEX box, with steel plates on all sides to contain the bullets fired into it. Since the club provides the guns and ammunition used, the reinforcement was only designed to withstand standard .22 LR bullets. Since the stated purpose of this facility is to safely introduce the public to the shooting sports, the club provides a variety of open-sight .22 rifles for customer use, including full-length and carbine-length Henry lever-action rifles, and a selection of smaller "Cricket" rifles for smaller/younger shooters. The Henrys are tube-loaded rifles which can hold up to 10 rounds, while the "Cricket" rifles are all single-shot breech-action rifles requiring manual insertion of each round. This allows someone coaching a junior shooter to maintain positive control of all ammunition, only allowing the shooter to have one round at a time.
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