Take Your Bow South: A Canadian Archer's Guide to Shooting in the US

Every winter, a good chunk of Canada packs up and heads for warmer ground, call it what you want, I'll say the word once and move on: snowbird season. Arizona, Texas, and Florida are the big three. What almost nobody thinks about on the way out the door is whether they can keep shooting while they're down there. You can. The US has its own sprawling archery scene, and ARC's own directory now tracks over 1,700 ranges across all 50 states. Let's walk through it, using ARC's US directory as the source for every number below.

Can I actually find somewhere to shoot near where I'm staying?

Almost certainly, yes. The US directory covers over 1,700 active ranges across all 50 states, with a search you can filter by state, city, or facility name.

That search is genuinely the fastest path if I haven't covered your specific city here. Type in the state or town you're renting near and see what comes up, the same way you'd check ARC's Canadian directory before a road trip up here. I'm going to focus the rest of this on the three places Canadian archers actually land in the biggest numbers: Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

What's actually different about shooting at a US range versus a Canadian one?

Based on the ranges pulled for this guide, a noticeably higher share of southern US listings are 3D or field-course clubs built around bowhunting prep, rather than pure indoor target lanes.

I don't want to turn one observation into a universal rule, plenty of the ranges below are straight indoor lane setups just like you'd find in Ontario. But the pattern is real in the sample: Full Draw Bowhunters in Phoenix and Buffalo Field Archery Club in Houston are both 3D or field-archery clubs first, oriented toward hunting prep more than Olympic-style target work. If your home club is 100% indoor recurve, don't be surprised if your closest option down south is built around foam deer instead of paper targets. Governing bodies differ too, USA Archery and state groups like the Arizona Bowhunters and Field Archery Association or Texas's TFAA run the show, not Archery Canada, so membership perks won't carry over even if a club looks similar on the surface.

What's on the ground for archery in Arizona?

Arizona has 57 active listings across 24 cities. Phoenix carries 10 of them, Tucson carries 7.

Phoenix's biggest piece is the state-run Ben Avery Shooting Facility complex, a public outdoor hub that shows up under a few listing names for its different archery areas, plus a scatter of commercial ranges around the rest of the city. I went deep on all 10 in the full Phoenix guide. Tucson is smaller but real: Tucson Mountain Park Archery Range and Southeast Regional Park Shooting Range are both public options, alongside shops like Desert Archers and Black Swan Archery Tucson. Browse the full Arizona directory for anywhere else in the state.

What's on the ground for archery in Texas?

Texas is the biggest archery state in the directory, 112 active listings across 71 cities. Houston shows 6 listings, San Antonio shows 11.

Worth flagging honestly: a couple of Houston's and San Antonio's raw counts are the same business recorded twice at the same address, so treat those two numbers as upper bounds. Houston's clearest walk-in option is West Houston Archery at $10 a day; San Antonio actually runs three separate USA Archery-affiliated JOAD youth programs, more structured youth coaching in one city than almost anywhere else in this guide. I wrote up both in full: the Houston guide and the San Antonio guide. The Texas state directory covers the other 69 cities, including the Rio Grande Valley towns a lot of Winter Texans actually settle in.

What about Florida, the most popular destination of all?

Florida has 59 active listings across 45 cities. Tampa carries 4, Miami carries 3, Orlando carries 2.

Florida's own directory page calls out year-round outdoor archery as the state's real advantage, and specifically highlights the Easton Newberry Archery Center, a major USA Archery training facility, as one of the state's standout stops. Beyond the big three cities, listings spread thin and wide, Sarasota, Jacksonville, Lakeland, and Riverview each carry a couple of active ranges of their own. If you're settling somewhere I haven't named, Florida's full directory is the place to check. City pages: Tampa, Miami, and Orlando.

What about crossing the border with a bow?

I'm not going to guess at customs rules, and neither should you.

A bow isn't a firearm, but that doesn't mean every detail of bringing archery equipment across the Canada-US border is obvious, and I haven't verified any specific rule closely enough to state it here as fact. Check the official pages for the Canada Border Services Agency on your way out and US Customs and Border Protection before you cross, rather than relying on a blog post, mine or anyone else's, for the specifics.

Where Canadians land, and what's on the ground

Destination	State	Active ranges	Directory page
Phoenix	Arizona	10	archeryrangesusa.com/arizona/phoenix
Tucson	Arizona	7	archeryrangesusa.com/arizona/tucson
Houston	Texas	6	archeryrangesusa.com/texas/houston
San Antonio	Texas	11	archeryrangesusa.com/texas/san-antonio
Tampa	Florida	4	archeryrangesusa.com/florida/tampa
Miami	Florida	3	archeryrangesusa.com/florida/miami
Orlando	Florida	2	archeryrangesusa.com/florida/orlando

Where to go from here

If you're wintering in Arizona, Texas, or Florida this year, the pages above cover the cities where most Canadians settle, and the search on ARC's US homepage covers you anywhere else. And when you fly back north, Toronto and the GTA or Calgary are two of the more complete Canadian markets I've mapped in this series.

Browse ARC's full Canadian directory, or find your winter destination on ARC's US directory.