The Redmond Rod & Gun Club has found a new home, just weeks before Deschutes County was set to evict the club from its shooting range near the Redmond Airport.

Club president Bill Layton said Thursday the club has signed a deal to purchase Halligan Ranch, and expects to finalize the deal by the first of February. Located off U.S. Highway 97 about 4 miles south of Redmond, the ranch has in recent years been home to a course for sporting clays, similar to trap shooting, but with clay pigeon targets launched from several different points.

The club has leased the property near the Redmond Airport from the county since the early 1970s, but in recent years, the county has been looking for ways to relocate the club to make way for manufacturing and other industrial-oriented businesses. In March, the county granted the club an extension of its lease, giving it until Dec. 31 to vacate the property.

Layton said with the deal for Halligan Ranch now in place, the county has granted the club another six-month extension. If all goes as planned, construction at the new site will be completed in the spring, he said, and the club’s roughly 375 members won’t have to go a single day without access to a range.

The move will allow his club to greatly expand what it offers to club members, organizations that use its facilities for training, and the general public.

“We’ve been living on 66 acres for about 70 years,” Layton said. “And this is 200-plus (acres) we’ll be moving to.”

Layton said the club’s initial plans are to open with facilities for skeet, trap and sporting clays shooting, along with separate ranges for pistol, rifle and archery shooting. The proposed rifle range would be a 600-yard range as compared to the 200-yard range near the airport, he said, and longer term, the club hopes to add a second skeet field, areas for tactical pistol shooting and cowboy action shooting, and possibly an indoor pistol range.

The club has been working to finalize a deal on Halligan Ranch for 11 months, Layton said, after seven years of largely unsuccessful efforts to find a new home. Layton said club members looked at 176 properties, many of which were suitable for shooting but lacked the necessary access to water and electricity.

The club’s range near the airport is one of two public shooting ranges operating in Deschutes County. The Central Oregon Shooting Sports Association runs a large range 24 miles east of Bend off U.S. Highway 20.

Layton said the club still has a lot of work to do, particularly securing conditional use permits for rifle and pistol ranges at the new facility and the funding to build them, but members are feeling good about their future heading in to the winter.

“We’re over the first hump, but we’re still climbing the mountain,” he said.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387, shammers@bendbulletin.com