Archery Ranges In Michigan

Honing your archery skills is a necessary facet of bow hunting or competition shooting. Visiting a local archery range is the best way to get ready for a 3-D tournament or for Michigan's Oct. 1 start of archery deer hunting season. Many clubs and archery retail outlets provide indoor and outdoor ranges where members and customers can let fly at standard bull's-eye targets or three-dimensional game statues.

Outdoor Ranges

If you are looking for outdoor ranges in Oakland County, check out the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment's Bald Mountain Shooting Range in Lake Orion or the one at Pontiac Lake Shooting Range in Waterford. Both are open to the public, and the Bald Mountain facility offers hunter education courses as well. However, no broadhead arrow shooting is permitted at Pontiac Lake where the range has one station each at 40, 30, 20 and 15 yards.

Oakland County Sportsmen's Club in Clarkston, while private with membership fees required, has outdoor ranges from 15 to 65 yards and a 3-D challenge with distances of 10 to more than 25 yards.

Indoor Ranges

In Ann Arbor, you can visit 4 Season Archery, which has a full 30-shot, 3-D course and a Target/Spot Pro range. The store even offers equipment as part of its fee to use the course. Of course, the fee is reduced if you bring your own.

Saginaw County archers will find both a 3-D course and standard target set-up at Bares Sports Shop, which is open to the public Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. in 2010. The shop also hosts a 12-week, 3-D indoor league January through April. Fees apply and vary according to the individual archer's requirements. Other Saginaw County practice ranges are available, but most are clubs requiring membership fees.

Further north, you will find two state-of-the-art, air-conditioned indoor ranges at Gauthiers Archery in Traverse City. The 3-D range features the Dart Interactive 3-D Target System, which includes instant feedback and an automated scoring system.

If you visit or live in the Upper Peninsula, check out Straight Line Archery in Ishpeming, where you can join a league to sharpen your skills or just take a turn at the indoor range. Acorns and Antlers Archery Range in Menominee also has an indoor range.

Equipment

Archers use a variety of equipment ranging from the traditional English-style longbow to modern compound bows and crossbows.

The longbow is drawn by pulling the string directly, relying almost entirely on the strength of the archer to determine the distance the arrow flies.

Compound bows are designed to limit the force required to hold the bow at the ready and are generally drawn and released using an assist. Although an archer's strength is an aspect of the final result, it is not as significant as with a longbow.

Crossbows, which have a stock and trigger and shoot bolts instead of arrows, do not limit the bolt's flight to the strength of the archer because the mechanism is similar to the action of a rifle.

Costs

Although ranges in retail establishments do not charge to test equipment, if you enter a league, ask up front what it costs to join. Most archery clubs are private and offer competition shoots and social activities along with indoor and outdoor ranges in exchange for your membership fees.

You can get started in archery with a longbow for youth for as little as $34 as of 2010. Decent compound bows, the most popular for 3-D and target shooters and hunters, start in the $200 range and escalate as the quality improves. Crossbows run about the same as compound bows.

Do not forget the accessories. You will need arrows or bolts, releases, gloves and sites. As with the bows, prices and quality vary.

Find a reputable local archery dealer or join an archery club to get invaluable information and advice before you indulge your passion for the sport.

Considerations

Archery is a safe sport. According to "ArrowSport Insight," published injury rates released by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a database used to track hospital injuries for more than 15,000 consumer products used in sports, only bowling, badminton and table tennis have less injuries per 1,000 participants than archery.