The Honey Island Shooting Range, located on the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area (WMA), will reopen to the public Friday (July 2), the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) announced.
Significant rainfall in the area has prevented the planned renovation and infrastructure improvement projects from being conducted. LDWF and SouthEast Louisiana Firearms Safety Inc. (SELFS) coordinated to reopen the range to public use.
The range will be closed later this summer once conditions are more favorable to conduct the planned renovations.
“This definitely isn’t how we wanted this to go, but unfortunately with the localized heavy rainfall and backwater flooding impeding access to the range, it will take up to two more weeks for things to dry out enough for work to be conducted,’’ said Eric Shanks, Hunter Education Program Manager for LDWF. “That’s only if we receive no more significant rainfall in that time. Given these conditions and the associated uncertainty for beginning construction, we felt it was unfair to our range users and SELFS to continue to keep the range shut down.”
The renovation work is part of a statewide LDWF shooting range improvement initiative. This construction will result in enhanced user and range safety features.
For more information on the Honey Island Shooting Range, go to https://honeyisland.org/.