Keeping a range log

Who is asking, and who is not

In the United States, nobody requires a private shooter to keep a range log. That is worth saying plainly, because a certain kind of software markets one as compliance. It is not. It is maintenance, and it is memory.

Canada is the more interesting case, and the obligation sits on the club rather than on you. Under SOR/98-212 s. 14, an approved club keeps member records — name, address, telephone, membership number, firearms licence number — for at least six years, and on request from the Chief Firearms Officer must provide a written description of a member's or guest's participation in target practice or competitions over the previous five years. The regulation does not prescribe an attendance book; in practice many clubs keep one so they can answer.

So the Canadian shooter's own log is not a legal requirement either. It is a backup for a record somebody else is obliged to be able to produce about them — which is a rather good reason to have one.

Purpose, membership and provincial practice

For restricted firearms, s. 28 of the Firearms Act makes the Chief Firearms Officer consider the purpose of a transfer: protection of life, a lawful profession, target practice or competition under the auspices of an approved club or range, or membership in a collection under s. 30. Club membership is not itself a statutory condition of the licence, but it is the ordinary way that bona fide purpose gets evidenced.

Whether you are asked for proof of membership varies by province and by CFO policy — British Columbia and New Brunswick have asked for a club letter at application and at renewal; shooters in Ontario report that it is not generally requested. That is practice, not statute, and it changes. Ask your provincial CFO rather than the internet.

Round counts: the part that actually pays for itself

The number that matters is rarely the lifetime total. It is rounds since this barrel was installed and rounds since the last cleaning, per firearm — because those are the numbers that explain a group that has quietly opened up over a season. Precision shooters track barrel installation dates for exactly this reason; cleaning intervals appear as their own category in the annual equipment surveys.

Published barrel-life figures circulate for every popular cartridge, and they vary wildly with load, rate of fire and how the barrel was treated. Treat any number you read, including one an app suggests, as somebody else's starting point. Your own log becomes the only figure that describes your barrel after about two seasons — which is the whole argument for starting it now rather than when you need it.

Match records: one shape does not fit

If you shoot competitively, PractiScore is where the official scores live, and there is no reason to duplicate it. What it does not hold is your equipment, your loads, your maintenance and your documents — that is where a personal log earns its place.

Be wary of any log that forces one scoring model on you. USPSA and multigun run on hit factor. IDPA, ICORE and SASS are time-plus with different penalty structures. Steel Challenge is strings with a dropped string. PRS and NRL22 count impacts against points possible. NRA, CMP and ISSF are precision scores with X-counts and positions. Trap and sporting clays count targets, and ATA shooters track their handicap yardage, a field that exists nowhere else in the sport. A log that flattens all of that into score loses the thing you wanted to look back at.

What to write down while you are still at the range

Date, range, discipline, which firearm, rounds fired, and the load if you handload. Everything else is optional and most of it will not get filled in. Ammunition consumed should come off your inventory in the same motion — a count you correct once a year is a count you have already lost.

If you also shoot in Germany, the picture is different in kind rather than in degree: there the club's signed range book, not your own notes, is what the association's certificate rests on. That is covered on the German page, Schießbuch digital führen.

How Waffenschrank helps

Waffenschrank records range sessions against date, place, discipline and the specific firearm, deducts the ammunition used from your inventory, and carries round counts per firearm, with a maintenance entry resetting the interval counter — which is where a barrel change belongs. Sessions export as a dated summary if a club or a CFO asks what you have been doing. Everything stays on the device; the optional backup is end-to-end encrypted and no account is required to use the app.

Where a country has a genuine legal requirement in this area, the app names it and names the source. Where it does not, it does not invent one. More about the app.

General information, not legal advice. In Canada, SOR/98-212 and the Firearms Act prevail and Chief Firearms Officer practice differs by province; in the United States, requirements in this area are state and local rather than federal. Ask the authority that governs you.