BOISE — A Florida man who has proposed opening a private school teaching military sniper skills in eastern Idaho should have checked with Bureau of Land Management officials before he recently invited local reporters to fire off high-caliber rifles on federal land, BLM officials said Tuesday.
In recent weeks, Michael Buchanan "Buck" Holly and his employees have been ferrying reporters to Clark County's remote Skull Canyon, located south of the Montana border in the Beaverhead Mountains. It's there that Holly hopes to use private, BLM and Forest Service land as a base for his weeklong "Advanced Mountain Sniper Course."
But if Holly had checked regulations before heading to the hills, he would have learned that private, for-profit sniper schools are forbidden on BLM and U.S. Forest Service ground, bureau spokeswoman Sarah Wheeler said.
Even the U.S. military would have to submit a formal application and take public comment before winning permission to use public land, to make sure any activities didn't harm sensitive species, pose undue safety risk or endanger the American Indian rock art that can be found in Skull Canyon's jagged cliffs, she said.
"We have worked with military and National Guard, but we'd still have to conduct a (environmental analysis)," Wheeler said.
"But where this is private or commercial, it really doesn't fit into that category."
One Idaho TV station reporter filmed firing a weapon from a mountaintop reported last week that Holly has already trained dozens of people in Skull Canyon. Holly told The Associated Press on Monday he'd only conducted scouting operations and media tours, not sniper and high-mountain survival courses for paying customers.
Holly said he hopes to open the school next year and plans to only train people affiliated with the U.S. military, including active duty and reserve forces. Eastern Idaho's terrain mirrors Afghanistan: 10,000-foot mountains, towering cliffs, high-elevation pine forests and yawning canyons to fire weapons across, he said.
"We're not stone cold killers out here, doing some vigilante stuff," he said. "We're teaching guys how to survive in the mountains."
But just how much demand there is for private sniper training is unclear. Col. Tim Marsano, an Idaho National Guard spokesman in Boise, said he's never heard of Idaho soldiers taking private sniper courses during his 20 years of service.
"I can't speak for the whole U.S. military," Marsano said. "But for our own men and women, the training we undergo annually in the normal course of a training year, combined with pre-deployment training to go to the places we've been — for example, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo — we have found that training meets our needs very well."
Holly, 39, describes himself as a former U.S. Marine with experience in the Balkans. But he refuses to say just where he served. Public records show he recently lived in Estero, Fla., and that he owns Corps Technology Group, a company whose mission is "to serve as the liaison between operational units and agencies and the defense industry," according to its website.
After learning of BLM concerns, Holly said he worries that bureaucratic rules could mean U.S. troops will be denied valuable training.
"If we get a bunch of backlash from the public or the BLM or U.S. Forest Service, what we're setting up is the inability for guys to get the proper training before they deploy," he said.
Holly said if he can't use public land in Idaho, he might limit his school to Skull Canyon's private ground — or look for suitable terrain elsewhere.
BLM employees were scheduled to visit the site this week to better map the borders of Skull Canyon's public land and a private inholding covering some 400 acres that's the location of a defunct copper mine, Wheeler said.