As you know by now, we live in the country. And is such, once in a while the neighbors get a bit feisty and decide to fire-off guns. Heck, so do we.
There’s a big difference though.
When we shoot, we stand near the edge of our property, firing into targets no where near the other property line, making sure all bullets STAY WELL WITHIN OUR PROPERTY. Rifles, shot guns, hand guns, high powered semi-automatics, all follow the same rules. We don’t want ANY destruction from a bullet other than a 2 liter or a watermelon exploding.
However, not all of our neighbors follow such strict safety codes.
The first incident, was on a nice, sunny day. I was getting ready to leave to get my son from preschool when I heard shots go off. Nothing unusual about that, but it REALLY sounded like someone was firing ONTO my property!
Thinking the sound was simply bouncing off the barn and the house, I ran down the path to our back hay field. Sure enough, I could hear shots coming from behind the field. I marched across the field trying to see what was going on. I was 2/3rds of the way across when I heard shouting, and an SUV suddenly began driving up to our fence near the property line. I continued walking until I was within talking range.
“Whatcha guys up to?” I asked.
“Oh, just firing-off some guns with some friends for fun,” one of the guys replied. “We didn’t think anyone was out here, and we didn’t see any animals.”
I nodded. “Look, I understand wanting to shoot guns and have a good time, but PLEASE make sure your bullets STAY on your property. At any given moment there could be a kid on a quad, or a horse, or me, wandering about back here. This is a FAMILY FARM, not a vacant field.”
“Ok, we’ll make our target larger then.”
Now if you think I’m being overly dramatic about their target being only 10 feet from the property line, let me say this. My neighbor down the road HAD THE VERY SAME PROBLEM. Unfortunately for her, bullets HAD entered her property and shot several items she owned. Items not too far from her grazing horses!
And then there was the time I was nearly shot myself.
Because our property zig-zags here and there, we have lots of different neighbors and property lines.
It was early afternoon in late October, early November and I had decided to go hunting. The weather was nice, so I decided to trek out on foot into the buck bedding area. I would sit and wait for something to go by (sounds crazy, but last year I sat on a in the woods and had a 6 pt. walk just 15 feet away from me!).
The area of our scrappy field borders our neighbor’s farm fields, and the area is so scrappy we can’t even attach game cams because there are so few trees, only bushes and thorns. However, there are several heavy deer paths through there, so that’s where I decided to lay wait.
I’d been sitting quietly for maybe 30 minutes (I probably fell asleep sitting up) when all of a sudden a gunshot rang out just feet away! It startled me so much I probably would have peed had I just drank coffee!
While I struggled to regain full awareness of what was going on, the shots continued to blast-off right in front of me. What did I do? Were the neighbors mad I was out hunting and now were trying to shoot me? They were literally firing RIGHT AT ME! The bushes hid everything from view, so I had no idea what was going on. After 15 minutes I figured-out that they must have a target directly in front of me . . . but how close to the property line was it, and what if they missed?
I quickly texted my daughter that if I wasn’t home by dark to come look for my dead body, then crawled-off into a buck bed and fell asleep for an hour while I waited for things to settle down. I really didn’t think a bullet would hit me if I was ground-level anyway.
I never did see any deer, although on my way home I DID scare a few out that were sitting just 30 feet away from my buck bed.
Just goes to show, that just because there’s no house behind your shooting path, doesn’t mean its clear, so stay smart with your target practice!