MetroParks of Butler County is opening a public archery range at Meadow Ridge MetroPark in Madison Township, near Middletown. The park is located on the site of the former Weatherwax Golf Club and the archery range is situated where the driving range once stood.
"There was a gap in public archery ranges in Butler County as a whole," says Katie Ely-Wood, communications manager. "The only other public archery range in Butler County is at Hueston Woods State Park on the northwest side of the county, and we knew that there was a great need for a public space to practice archery in the northeast part of the county, specifically. Meadow Ridge. MetroPark was just a no-brainer for this new range."
The range is unsupervised and open daily during regular park hours from 8 a.m. to dusk. Archers must be aged 18 or accompanied by an adult 21 years or older.
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MetroParks worked with Young Guns Archery, a nonprofit that trains female and child archers, about creating the range, and then partnered with the park district on the design. Ely-Wood says the district used data from a recreational database to confirm that an archery range would be a good fit.
"Based on each of our parks, and within a three-mile range of Meadow Ridge MetroPark, the desire for archery was extremely high," says Ely-Wood. "We knew at least around that general vicinity there was a real want for a place to practice archery, and really, it's going to be able to draw folks all the way ... from West Chester — there's no real good public archery spaces down [in] the southeast part of the county, either — so we're hoping that this is really going to be a big draw for the park."
Ely-Wood says, moving forward, the county will also use the range to qualify hunters for the annual whitetail deer bow hunting season. Deer bow hunting season opened Sept. 28 in Ohio.
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Young Guns provided the range's targets, and the frames were built by a local Eagle Scout, according to a statement. Users will need to provide their own equipment, except when Young Guns hosts scheduled clinics. Broadhead arrow tips are not permitted, only field/practice tips are allowed.
The range is marked with boundary signs and Ely-Wood says a flagging system is in place to let users know when it's safe to enter the range to retrieve arrows.
The archery range officially opens Oct. 1. Young Guns is offering a free archery basics clinic for kids ages 8-18 Oct. 3 from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Equipment will be provided, but registration is required.
