For anyone considering going there for the first time or new to going there, I can tell you it's quite "different" from what it used to be. Going back ten years or more my wife and I were talking one day and the subject of perhaps her learning to shoot handguns came up. We had been married for a long time, and she didn't grow up around guns and had never handled or fired one. It seemed to be a worthwhile thing for her to try, and with maybe getting a carry permit if she learned how to shoot due to the times getting crazier every year. One thing led to another and I bought a Smith & Wesson .22 semi-automatic to start her out with and teach her the basics.
I don't like indoor ranges and have never used one. So when looking online near our location in Manchester, TN, for outdoor ranges I came across Viola Valley and we went there. A little bit of a drive but not too bad. I met the guy Ralph that owned the property the first time we went. His wife ran a dog rescue, with some kennel buildings and fenced areas where you drive in. He was outside there and walked over to the truck to chat. First impression was he was a bit weird and not my cup of tea, but that changed as we kept going back and had several conversations with him. He seemed to have a good memory for vehicles and people that frequented the place, and since he was usually outside doing something around the kennels we'd stop to say hi or he would wave at us. A nice and interesting guy. We quickly fell in love with the place. With two handgun range pavilions and several for rifle shooting, they were spaced way apart. And it was never crowded. The perfect place if learning to shoot and having some privacy. And with no "range officer" hovering around eyeballing what you were doing. It was based on the honor system provided you were responsible and acted right, nobody bothered you.
After going there for awhile we found Ralph had gotten cancer and treatments for it. And as usual with that it comes back or gets worse after thinking maybe things would be okay. At some point he sold the range property to a fellow that owns other property down in there. The "road" where you drive in is not a through-road. It runs down past some houses and large acreage with crops and animal pastures, and ends at the gun range. Ralph was still "running" the range for the new owner for a bit, until he eventually passed away.
We went shooting there a whole lot when my wife discovered she loved it, and I discovered she had a nautral knack for it and became a good and safe shooter very quickly. We loved the place and I would have written a 5-star review back then. After several years we backed off from going as much. Busy with other things and the "newness" of shooting had worn off a little for my wife, although she still loved going. Not long ago we went after not having been in quite awhile. We had barely started getting our guns and ammo out and getting set up to shoot when a pickup truck came driving up. A guy leaned over and yelled out the window, "Hey, did y'all pay?". That instantly hit me the wrong way. No introduction of hey, how are you doing, I'm the range owner, I was checking the payment box and didn't see where you paid or I might have missed it, or anything civil as I would have done. Just a rude and abrubt question that sounded accusatory like we hadn't. It galled me also that we had been so often years back that we spent hundreds of dollars going there, although he had no way of knowing that. And made worse by the fact that early on when going there we had started putting our payment in an envelope when placing it in the "mailbox', with the number of people and payment amount and the make of my vehicle. I just always figured that was a good idea if a lot of people were coming and going, and we had done that this time also.
The guy drove back out and came back after a few minutes and said he got it. Mumbling some crap about it was over to the side or in the back or something and he hadn't seen it. Seriously? It was in a big white envelope with my payment info written on it. I was pretty ticked off the whole time we were there after that. And from reading a couple of other fairly recent reviews here it would seem the guy is obsessed over people paying or not. We were talking about going the other day, but I really don't care to go back there. This was only one bad experience we had, and it could have been a case of the guy just not seeing the payment in the box. The thing that hit me wrong was the way he yelled out his question, with no introduction or normal civility. When I combine that with some recent Google reviews of the place I figure he's a rude jackwad, and I really don't care to patronize a place with an owner like that. And that's a real shame for us. read more