LaRue Tactical Range Day

LaRue Tactical, a local (Leander, Texas) AR manufacturer, had a range day at the new Best of The West range in Liberty Hill. LaRue makes very nice and high-quality equipment. I considered them as a supplier for parts for my AR build, but their prices are well above my budget for a rifle.

Anyhow, this was the first time they've put on this event, at the new Best of The West range in Liberty Hill. The range just opened a couple of months ago, and I've heard some overwhelmingly positive reviews about the place.

It is the only range of its kind anywhere near here. They've got 400 acres of land with a 1000yd rifle range, 8 tactical shooting bays of varying sizes for running and gunning drills, 2 skeet fields, 2 trap fields, and a pistol range. They've also got RV hookups and plans for a 3D archery range and courses. The place seems to be made specifically for practical training and competition. It's as if someone finally listened to the shooting community and built a range to fit our needs.

LaRue provided guns, ammo, and food free of charge to the public. There were several shooting stations with different caliber guns and different styles of shooting (prone, standing, supported with a barrier, etc). I ran into some coworkers, so we hung out and shot stations together.



If I had to guess, I'd say something like 2000 people showed up yesterday. The event ran from 10am until 5pm, but I didn't show up until a little after 2pm. Folks I've talked to who went earlier in the day report very long waits (over an hour) for just about everything, including food. By the time I got there, the wait for different shooting stations was 20-30 minutes.

If LaRue makes this a recurring event, they would do well to beef up the stations with more places and have more staff available to ease the wait times. It seems like turnout was far above any expectations, so the LaRue folks were simply overwhelmed with the number of people there. Despite all that, they made the event a great one. I certainly had a great time shooting their guns. My only regret is that I didn't have time to shoot all the stations, especially the prone distance shooting station they had set up.

My favorite gun of the day was the 7.62 OBR with a Trijicon ACOG on top (pictured above). It was a really sweet shooter, and made accurate shots easy. I really dug the caret-shaped ( ^ ) red reticle in the ACOG. Thanks go out to everyone from LaRue who made this event possible. I look forward to attending again if this becomes a recurring event.