East Hampton Town Opens Disc Golf Course at Buckskill Meadow Preserve

Up until recently, anyone in East Hampton Town looking for a game of disc golf had to travel about an hour and a half to Heckscher State Park in Great River.

Now, though, East Hampton Town has opened its own 12-hole, par 3 course at Buckskill Meadow Preserve, the third of its kind on Long Island.

Disc golf is a sport in which players throw a frisbee until they hit a designated target, typically an elevated receptacle substantially larger than a standard golf hole. Each player carries three discs: one for the tee box, one for mid-range and one for close-range.

The town created the course through a collaboration between the departments of Land Acquisition and Management and Parks, each of which consulted with a committee.

Since the course opened in November, Land Management Director Scott Wilson has been out on the course almost every clear day after work, tossing the disc around.

The town plotted a nine-hole course at first, but “for safety’s sake,” it reduced that number to six holes — a more manageable amount — and it opened to the public in the spring of 2024. After a few rounds with colleagues in both departments, Wilson decided: “This is actually pretty fun.”

Then, the town elected to expand the use, so the committee used an aerial view to plot the area out on GIS, a technology used to analyze geographic data, before adding another six holes, bringing the total up to 12.

“It’s really been growing in leaps and bounds,” Wilson said. “I’m actually quite surprised.”

The course is registered on an app, UDisc, which allows players to keep score, view and review different courses and check hole layouts. Right now, the Buckskill course registers 55 users. That number, though, doesn’t account for those who “don’t have that app.”

On the app, Buckskill is rated a 4.2 out of 5, which “frankly, is astonishing, since we’re only a 12-hole course,” Wilson said.

At Buckskill on Tuesday, March 25, Wilson opened the app to show how it works. The screen was already zoomed in on a map of Ohio, black marks dotted about, each marking a course.

“I’ve got a conference in Ohio,” Wilson said, looking at the map. He had been planning ahead for his trip. “I’m going to go play in Ohio. I’ve got a conference there anyway. Why not?”

Since the full course opened in November, Wilson has played around 125 rounds — his record is even par — and watched a handful of YouTube videos to improve his technique.

At each teebox, there is a white post with a diagram of the hole painted on, allowing players to find their target, which is often tucked behind or among trees.

The first tee is near the parking lot, then holes four through seven loop into the woods with narrow fairways. Starting with the eighth hole, the course comes back to the more open infield.

On the first tee box, there is a lost-and-found. Wilson encouraged beginners to “borrow” a disc from there and throw it around the course.

“I introduce myself when I see new faces that I don’t recognize because I’m quite curious to see what they think about it,” Wilson said. “There’s always a better way of doing the same thing.”

In that park, the town has felled many trees infested with the southern pine beetle. On the disc golf course, those trees now have a use.

At the back of the sixth hole — a short one, only 115-feet — there sits a wall of logs. The stacked up trees are arranged in such a way to block errant discs from striking pedestrians on the multiuse path that runs close to the hole.