2019-10-29 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – October 29, 2019 loudest firearms we could bring, which we did, we wanted to caluculate what would happen with downslope winds – in other words towards the resort – we wanted to consider what would happen in temperature inversions, which happen occasionally and helps sound propagate a little further and we wanted to find the quietest places within the resort complex to test this so... We did – when we fired the rifle the sound levels would not project to be heard anywhere in the resort area. When the shot guns were aimed towards the resort they found that that could be detectable and the solution to that was to re-orient all the proposed ranges so that they’re firing away from that and again this is without sound abatement. And that was mainly it. Now – you’ll see here – this is from the last test – these are sound levels that are projected, you know, in the various winds and there are many more slides that the consultant did for this project and what you’ll see is the red circle then it’s a yellow, then it’s a dark green, then there’s a light green and then there’s a fairly light blue. That light blue represents a 35 decibel sound level – you know what 35 decibel sounds like? That’s what would be heard at that last light blue curved line so could it be heard? Well, if there was absolutely no traffic, no helicopters, no motor cycles, no construction and it was the dead of night – sure. But the range wouldn’t be used during the daytime, so... All right, so we’ve had three sound tests in ten years, we’ve gone with industry standard equipment – we couldn’t determine any gun fire noise in the 2005, 2012 tests – we used that sound incorporated in the computer model to predict landscape-wide sound travel and this is very well documented way of measuring sound and we find that the worst case gun fire sound is well within applicable environmental noise standards, OK. Now we did have one reported – one person reported that they heard the gunfire at one of the resort areas and it sounded like dat, dat, dat, dat, dat, dat. Well, none of us were shooting anything that sounded like that in fact, you know, I was the one with the rifle – I would be in jail if I was shooting something like that so not allowed. Turned out it was some construction equipment but that’s how – they were just anticipating the sound, you know, yeah, it’s somewhere on there so one of our board members was present when that was said so it was a point of some humor. All right. So here are the 2005 and 2012 sound test perimeters – the yellow check boxes and the red check boxes are from those sites where we had the pick-ups to try to hear the sound of gun fire and we had one that’s off the map – it’s up at the resort by the gold course – up there by Puuwaawaa and by the Waikoloa Village and throughout the golf course – the resort complex – our sensors couldn’t pick up anything. And this is our vision – this is what we would build towards – how quickly these things can happen is all a matter of you know what funding we can get and what order we do things in – but we would build to existing safety standards – that is an absolute must in any shooting range – use mitigation technology – there’s plenty out there that can cover much of the noise, reduce it significantly. We would have venues for all kinds of shooting activities – certainly one of the most important is safety training – that’s something that is in – people can go in and they can buy a firearm and they’re not required to have training. Pistols 19