I've got it pretty good. A very nice public range 20 minutes away and several popular shooting spots in the national forests 30 to 40 minutes away.
The public range is very nice. $100 a year or $10 each visit. What with shooting there almost every week it works out to a couple dollars per visit. The range has paper targets at 13, 25, 50, 75 and 100 yards, paper or steel at 200 and steel at 300 yards. Nice benches, decent hours, and pleasant, but strict, range officers. They have a blackpowder club associated with the range, but their shoots are only on Sundays and I've got higher priorities that day. One advantage over the national forest spots is the range has shade. The national forests here are really national deserts - you have to bring your own shade.
The NF spots are just some place with a good sized hill or mountain for a backstop and maybe 50 to 100 yards clear flat land leading up to the hill. The closer to the city, the more popular they are and get very busy on weekends. And you never know what kind of trashy people you'll encounter. By trashy, I mean those who bring stuff like old computers, tvs and junk like that to shoot and leave it behind when they're done. I usually take more trash home than I bring - just a small attempt to clean it up. The slightly further distance offsets the lesser cost and more target setup/cleanup time keeps me going to the range, unless I've got all my sons and friends to help with the setup/cleanup, or we want to do some shooting that wouldn't be allowed on the range. Nothing to exciting mind you, just an old contest my brothers and I did with 22s when we were very young - throw an empty 50 count 22 ammo box on the ground and then shoot at it and make it jump until it went some agreed upon distance. I usually won - I never did tell them the trick was to shoot under the box, not into it.
