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When this magazine and I were both a lot younger, I took my first trip to Desert Sportsmen's Club in Las Vegas. The Club often hosts new product seminars at the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, and editors and writers like me get a chance to try out new guns and accessories and talk to the folks that manufacturer and market them. My first trip out to the club was on a bus full of folks, who had been picked up at a meeting point at one of the "Strip" hotels. We were almost as eager to catch up with one another as we were to get to the range, so the half hour or so trip passed quickly. Although I noticed that we seemed to be getting pretty far out of town, as the Strip gave way to generic plazas, supermarkets, and then finally, what seems to someone born and raised in the East, a lot of desolate desert landscape, I was assured we were still in Las Vegas proper. On another trip at another SHOT Show, I rode out in a rental car with my dad, because we had spent some time in the morning setting up our booth and weren't ready when the busses rolled. As often happens at SHOT (and any other trade show, I'm sure), we were also trying to track down some missing item for the booth-cartons of magazines, boxes of rate cards or some key piece of the display-it's always something at a show. Our brand, spanking new cell phones didn't work that far out in the desert, in the shadow of some impressive mountains, because there were no nearby towers. In addition to SHOT Show forays to Desert Sportsmen, for the last five years we have been holding the range portion of our Firearms & Fiction seminars there as well, so I often make two trips a year that way-one in January and another in October or November. Even with just six months between trips, it's astonishing how much the landscape changes and how much closer it seems from the hotel to Desert Sportsmen.
And, across the road from Desert Sportsmen's Club, there's a planned community of townhouses going up. Last year, they were working on the roads, this year, many of the buildings were already framed out. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a model home open when I'm back through in a couple months. While Las Vegas and its environs is deliberately anomalous in a lot of ways, this isn't one of them. All over the country, shooting clubs that existed for generations at some remove from the rest of the world are now finding the world literally at their doorstep. In some cases, accommodations are reached, with benefits to everyone, but mostly, the clubs are forced to move even farther out-if they can. As clubs are forced to move, or even disband, it's harder to find a place to shoot that's just a half hour away, and when the trip to the range starts taking 45 minutes, a hour, or even two, the number of folks who can spend a day on the range is greatly reduced. In November, even on a Tuesday, there were still folks besides us at Desert Sportsmen (including city police who were practicing nearby) and club members we talked to were determined to stay despite impressive offers for the land, even by Las Vegas standards. I hope that Desert Sportsmen gets to stay, because the club
members I've met seem like a great bunch and because it's convenient
for us, but mostly because once it goes, it won't come back.
Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission. |
By
Peggy Tartaro,
There's
now an expressway that takes you part of the way, cutting the
trip time in half. But, there's no longer any "desert"
until you get to the club itself. All around, one of the fastest-growing
cities in America is moving closer to Desert Sportsmen, and where
there used to be a good 10-15 miles of open landscape, there's
now a Pottery Barn, a Starbucks, and a strip plaza with a grocery
store and gas station, and of course, just like everywhere else
it seems, you can use your cell phone whenever you want. Unsurprisingly,
there's also a casino going up at the expressway exit you take
to the club.
