[Bongo Boy]

Membership at the only local private club is about $350 one-time, and about $27/month thereafter, no range fees. However, the last time I took a guest to the club, it was $20 for the guest--the same fee you paid. That fee is for whatever time is available, pretty much, or for whatever time you have a lane reserved. It has just 10 lanes, so is not available at all for walk-ins on weekends at all.

The local outdoor range, open to the public, includes enough covered shooting stations for about 30 handgun shooters and uncovered stations for about 20 handgun, plus long-range rifle stations to accommodate about 40 or so rifle shooters. They charge $10 per person to shoot all day.

Ideally, if I'm turning away 50% of the people who want to shoot, then I would raise lane fees until I'm keeping the place full, but turning away only very few folks. One has to be careful doing that, of course, since many who are turned away won't come back at all, partly because they feel the way you do and partly because they don't know if the rates will come back down.

I think a reasonable solution for them would be to not boost rates to ridiculous levels, but accept reservations. However, the number or reservations made at my private club for which no one shows up is fairly high--people aren't generally very considerate when they don't have to be.