A shooting range bag can help you avoid wasting precious range time digging through a cardboard box or plastic bag looking for your magazine or ear protection. Good range bags provide all the room you need to organize your ammunition, magazines and accessories so you know exactly where each one is, leaving more time for the fun thing you went to the range for in the first place—shooting! To make a good selection, ask yourself how much equipment you need to haul, how likely you are to abuse your range bag and how you prefer to carry it.
How Much Stuff Do You Have?
Shooters tend to collect lots of stuff, from guns and ammunition to eye and ear protection to tools and cleaning supplies. Getting all that equipment to the range organized where you can quickly find what you want is where a shooting bag truly shines. If you plan to haul several guns to the range, along with magazines, ammo and accessories for each, you need a big bag. If you just have one small pistol, a box of ammo and a couple of magazines, a smaller bag will work. Don’t go larger than you need to, though: Bigger bags often dare you to take more stuff than you really need, and that makes for a heavy load.
How Roughly Will You Treat It?
Range bags get some of their roughest treatment while being loaded and unloaded from vehicles. If you’re the kind of person who will handle your bag with kid gloves, gently placing it in the trunk of your car and gently removing it again, toughness isn’t a consideration. But if you’re more likely to toss your range bag in the back of your pickup, where it will rattle around in transit, toughness should be among your top priorities. A bag made of strong, resilient materials will hold up better and last longer, even under rugged conditions.
Shoulder Strap Or Backpack?
The way you choose to carry your range bag is a matter of personal preference. Many models come with carry handles and a shoulder strap, while others are backpacks. Those accustomed to wearing a backpack a lot may like that configuration best. But if carrying a heavy load on your back for several hundred yards will cause you undue back or neck pain, the handle/shoulder strap model lets you carry the bag in a couple of different ways, allowing you to switch from hand to hand or shoulder to shoulder. That eases the strain on any one area.
