The outdoor archery range will have to close, if a bylaw banning backyard bow-shooting goes ahead as written.
Council is considering changes to the firearms bylaw to ban bow shooting within city limits, after police were powerless to intervene when a backyard shooter refused to stop last year.
The Campbell River Fish and Wildlife club’s outdoor and indoor archery ranges are within city limits. Speaking for the club, Rod Saunders says he’s surprised no one talked to them before crafting the bylaw, and says it creates a new safety problem.
“It’s going to seriously affect the club,” he says. “If we can’t shoot outdoors, people will be going just out of town to fire their bows. They’ll take a target and set it up somewhere and shoot somewhere else where it might not be as safe.”
Saunders says the same thing happened when the gun range closed its facility within city limits; there was an increase in people using firearms in gravel pits and empty lots outside city boundaries.
Saunders says the club hopes council will give the ranges an exemption so it can maintain the outdoor range. The indoor range would still be able to operate if the bylaw goes ahead as written, but Saunders says it would limit club members to only a few months a year in winter when volunteers can be present at the range.
Public comments are being accepted on the bylaw amendment until August 3. To make a comment, drop one off in person at city hall (301 St. Ann’s Road) or by email to [email protected] by 4 p.m. on Thursday, August 3, 2023.
