John's Mountain shooting range

Can anyone tell me if it is open? I would like to find out before I drive an hour to get there!

Thanks,
John

Also if anyone knows anywhere closer to Rome to sight in a rifle please let me know.

I was there about 2 weeks ago and it was open. I heard something about DNR letting that WMA go back to the National Park Service, but I haven't heard anything else about it. As far as I know the range is still open, but I'm not sure if there are any DNR folks looking after it any more.

hunter63john said:

Also if anyone knows anywhere closer to Rome to sight in a rifle please let me know.

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Well, there is Adairsville Sporting Range, but I gotta tell you...I was not impressed at all when I went there about a month ago. The benches are horribly designed and built. The grass was shoulder high on the range and actually obstructed the targets in places and you had to walk through a swamp to get to the 50 yard targets. The guy that owns the place isn't the best at customer relations either. He has this jury-rigged target retrieval system on the 100 yard target holders...it works, but it's kind of pathetic-looking.....anyway, you have to watch the cable for a piece of black tape to know when it's at the 100 yard mark. If it's not all the way out, and you shoot at a target, because of the way the cables are rigged you could hit one of the cables. He has a sign up that says if you accidentally hit one of his cables he'll charge you $700 for it ....Good luck with that one, Bubba! When I was there he was out there every 20 minutes asking if I was finished because he had other people waiting for a lane. He only has 2 benches, but there's room for 3 or 4 more. When I first got there I told him I would at least 2 to 3 hours, maybe more . It is first-come-first serve. I got there early and rented a lane and he knew up front that I was going to be there for a while. I felt like I was paying my money, I was there first, I would leave when I was finished. I don't like being pressured or rushed. If he wanted to limit the time I was there, he should have told me that up front. After he came back there for the 3rd time in an hour and a half and asked me if I was finished yet, I finally got fed up and packed up and left and went on up to John's Mountain and finished what I was doing. I won't likely be back. It cost me $34.00 for 2 shooters for about 3 hours...it costs $5 for as many shooters as you have with you for as long as you want to stay at John's Mountain and the range is a LOT nicer.

I called DNR. It's open. Go to the DNR website to get the hours it's open.

Open 9:00 A.M - 5:00 P.M. Monday through Saturday. Closed on Sunday.

germag said:

I was there about 2 weeks ago and it was open. I heard something about DNR letting that WMA go back to the National Park Service, but I haven't heard anything else about it. As far as I know the range is still open, but I'm not sure if there are any DNR folks looking after it any more.

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It could go back to the USFS (along with Cohutta and a bunch of other areas) but I sure hope it doesn't. See this thread for more details.

Thank yall very much for the information! And I sure hope they dont!

Yeah, me too. I've already written my letter to Sonny Perdue asking him not to let that happen. I asked him to please consider giving the DNR some exemptions from the budget cuts to allow for continued enforcement. I also pointed out to him that if they reduce the enforcement that without the Law Enforcement presence poaching and other illegal activities (such as Methamphetaine manufacturing) will run rampant on public land as well as private lands.

All you have to do is go to his website and use the "contact us" button. http://gov.georgia.gov/02/gov/home/0,2218,78006749,00.html

Thanks for the link, germag!

I meant in my last post to include the link for this thread: http://forum.gon.com/showthread.php?t=241539 but I see you've already found it. We need to get as many people as we can to call, write, email, etc. Given the way things have been going lately, we hunters/outdoorspeople need to start being a lot more vocal in the political process.