If You Go
What: Sycamore State Park archery range
Where: Diamond Mill Road, just south of park office
Hours: Sunrise to sunset, seven days a week
Cost: Free
Info: (513) 523-6347
TROTWOOD — There once was an overgrown field, full of weeds, scraggly shrubs, brush, honeysuckle and dead roots and vines.
Now there is a freshly mown football-field-size range with archery targets where the shrubs once stood.
The new archery range on Diamond Mill Road at Sycamore State Park did not appear by magic. In fact, it is the result of a partnership between government agencies and citizens. More than that, it was created by the hard work of a local Christian bowhunters group, the 22-member Lord of the Harvest Archery Club.
“We wanted to create a quality range, similar to Hueston Woods and Spring Valley,” said Gunars “Gunny” Cakste of Englewood, the leader of the archery project for the bow club. “So far, the reception has been tremendous among area archers. There have been all kinds of people using the range, not just club members.
“We were having to drive an hour just to shoot, and we always said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have an archery range around here?’ I talked to Jeff Wenning at the Division of Wildlife and Lonnie Snow, park manager at Hueston Woods and Sycamore, to get the go-ahead.”
The parks provided the land, some lumber and some of the initial help in clearing a spot just south of the park office that used to be a small parking lot for a trail head. The lot can still be used for that. The entrance to the trail was moved a few feet so that people would not have to cross the archery field to get to it.
The Division of Wildlife provided the targets and the bow club did the rest.
Cakste is a master carpenter by trade, so he headed up construction of extra-wide picnic tables behind the firing line, which faces north. There are also racks for hanging bows and permanent in-ground quivers made of PVC to hold arrows.
“We’re not finished,” Cakste said. “We’re working on constructing a 12-foot tower that will simulate tree-stand shooting. And then, probably over the winter, we hope to carve out a 3-D archery course somewhere in the park.”
So far the only problem has been parking — there’s not enough of it. The small lot only holds about six cars and during the Thursday evening club shoots, cars are parked three deep (total of 15-18), which means if you get there early, someone will have to move a couple of cars if you want out.
Snow said the park is looking at ways to expand the parking and Cakste said a fence, donated by a local company, would be put up to keep people from walking directly onto the range.
“This is a family place,” he said. “We want families to be able to come here and have fun. It’s safe and it’s all free. People who were shooting in their back yards are coming out and finding this is so much better — and safer.”
He pointed out the club’s Thursday night tournaments (6:45 p.m.-dark) are open to the public. There is time for practice and there’s shooting at all sorts of targets, stationary, moving and flying.
The range, which allows field points only — no broadheads — will be open into October. Cakste said the targets will be removed shortly after the deer archery season opens on Sept. 26. The range would reopen in April.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2409 or jmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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