Woodworth Shooting Range reopens for 1st time since December

WOODWORTH, La. (KALB) - On Thursday, April 14, 2022, the Woodworth Shooting Range reopened for the first time since December.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries closed the range in December for renovations. Those renovations were part of a larger project to improve public shooting ranges around the state. Now, most of the renovations are complete, and the range is back open to the public.

The renovations at the Woodworth range include a newly built backstop and side berms, a wall that separates the rifle and pistol ranges, sound suppressing insulation and a larger more accessible parking lot.

LDWF said the renovations were a proactive way to improve the range and were not a response to any safety issues the range had.

“The whole purpose of this project was to bring our ranges up to modern range standards,” said Eric Shanks, LDWF Hunter Education Program Manager. “Not to say they were unsafe before, but anything built 30 or 40 years ago, is not the same as something built now.”

The range still has some final renovations to complete like the bathrooms, but the range will resume operating during its normal hours.

“We’re very excited, it’s been a long time coming,” said Shanks. “It wasn’t projected or planned to take as long as it did to get the work done we needed. So, we are very excited to open it, we opened it as soon as possible when it was accessible to the public and everybody could come and have a good time. So, we’re very excited to get it open and looking forward to hopefully everybody coming out having a good time shooting and learning how to be safe with firearms.”

For more information on range rules and times, you can CLICK HERE.

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