Illegal shooters leave the forest a battlefield of splintered trees
- Details
- Created on Friday, 17 June 2011 21:37
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
By Dave Philipps, The Gazette
PIKE NATIONAL FOREST • It looks like a battlefield: trees splintered by thousands of bullets, the dead trunks and toppled limbs sprawled on a bed of shattered glass, scattered trash and piles of shotgun shells.
The only thing missing are human casualties. And some say that is only a matter of time.
Illegal target shooting here has reached unprecedented levels, driven by the twin pressures of a growing population and a shrinking number of established shooting areas. More and more gun owners are shooting in the woods, posing a threat to the forest and the people who use it.
Rangers say the number of shooters increases every year, and because of budget cuts and an overstretched staff they have no good way to police them.
“This was all done by illegal shooting,” U.S. Forest Service ranger Frank Landis said, looking at a ravaged hillside off Mount Herman Road west of Monument.
About two acres of trees had been cleared by bullets. The war-torn meadow is covered in shell casings, beer bottles, cups, and ammo boxes.
“And actually, this looks pretty good. We just cleaned it up. No TVs. No washing machines,” Landis said.
As he spoke the pounding of machine gun fire echoed up the canyon. Three men in a pickup pulled up to shoot, saw the ranger and moved on. Landis found them a few minutes later, setting up to fire directly down a forest road.
“That’s crazy, irresponsible, and illegal,” Landis said, shaking his head.
Shooting in the forest no longer means families plinking at cans with a .22. The shooters here, Landis said, bring “whole arsenals” of high-power assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and big caliber semi-automatic pistols.
Three times last year the forest service had to put out wildfires started by local people shooting illegally at propane canisters.
Target shooting is allowed in most of the Pike National Forest, so long as it is done in a safe place, away from campsites and trails, and shooters don’t fire at trees or leave trash. But many shooters pay scant attention to the rules, the forest service and other forest users say.
And since both the number of shooters and the number of hikers, campers and bikers grows every year, the conflict between forest users is heating up.
The local problem is focused on three roads with easy access to the forest: Mount Herman Road, Rampart Range Road and Upper Gold Camp Road. At almost every pull-off, the trash from rampant shooting litters the ground.
“At least here there is a natural backstop. It is fairly safe,” said Landis, looking at the small bowl on Mount Herman Road where so many trees had been felled. “The next few sites are really scary.”
Just up the road a shooting spot overlooks a road on one side and hiking and biking trails on the other.
“This is really dangerous,” he said.
Most of the trees on the ridge have been killed, many reduced to toothpicks. Landis estimates about 500 trees a year are killed this way in the forest.
The forest service can fine shooters or give them a court summons for not following regulations, and rangers hand out dozens of citations each weekend, but they are unable to keep up.
A “No shooting beyond this point” sign in the back of Landis’ truck is a Swiss cheese of holes. Rangers have replaced the same sign three times this year. They will replace it many more.
The Pike National Forest encompasses 1.1 million acres that see an estimated 5 million recreational visitor days annually, but the forest only has three law enforcement rangers.
“We just don’t have enough people out there,” said Landis. “It is kind of the wild west.”
You don’t have to tell that to Steve Hitchcock.
He moved to the Pikes Peak region seven years ago after a career as an army sniper. He is not the kind of guy who is squeamish around high-powered weapons, but he avoids parts of the Pike National Forest because, he said, “It scares the living hell out of me.”
While riding his mountain bike he has encountered groups of men shooting indiscriminately into the forest.
“People are just firing into the trees,” he said. “You could kill someone and not even know it. It’s a very emotional issue for me. Up off Gold Camp Road there are nice campsites — wildflowers and streams. It bothers me people can’t enjoy these beautiful wildlands because some jackass with a bottle a Jack Daniel’s is shooting off his AK.”
Other users agree: Illegal shooting has put large parts of the forest off-limits.
“I never go up Mount Herman Road; it’s a war zone,” said Nate Hebenstreit, a mountain biker and hiker who lives in Palmer Lake. Recently he saw a man firing an assault rifle across the popular Limbaugh Canyon trail while standing next to a “no shooting” sign. While riding with friends he’s heard bullets whistle by through the trees.
“They trash the forest. They shoot right off the road. It’s not safe. And unfortunately, the remedy is we just stay away. I can’t help but think sooner or later someone is going to get shot.”
Shooting lead to opening - and closing - of public ranges
Rangers have struggled with illegal shooting for over 20 years.
In 1988, ranger John Benshoof gave a Gazette reporter a tour of the “terrible, scarred landscape” off Old Stage Road.
He stopped at a 150-foot-tall Douglas fir and examined the sap dripping from bullet holes. “Look at this old soldier,” he said, “He’s dying from his wounds. Literally bleeding to death.”
Benshoof decried the trash and unsafe shooting and warned if shooters did not clean up their act, the forest service would impose restrictions.
Less than a year later a bullet fired from Mount Herman Road smashed the window of a house in nearby Red Rocks Ranch. Within weeks the forest service banned shooting on the first two miles of the road. Soon after, the agency closed 18,000 acres around Old Stage Road and Gold Camp Road to shooting.
“Those areas were just too close to the city,” Landis said.
The restrictions have not been changed since 1989.
To give people a safe place to shoot, the forest service built two formal public shooting ranges, one near the St. Peter’s Dome overlook on Gold Camp Road, and a second off Rampart Range Road above Garden of the Gods.
But the forest service was unable to manage the areas and both became trashed and plagued by unsafe shooting. The forest service closed the St. Peter’s Dome range in 2000, saying it was too close to populated areas. The Rampart Road area was closed in 2009 after a shooting accident left one man dead.
But in solving one problem, the forest service created another. El Paso County has the second-highest gun ownership rate in Colorado; 37.5 percent of all households in the region have a gun. But there is no free, public shooting range.
“There is a huge demand and few places to go,” said Dick Gandolf, a local National Rifle Association representative. Dragon Man’s, in eastern El Paso County, is the only shooting range open to the public. Many local clubs, he said, have long waiting lists.
“People are still buying ammunition,” Gandolf said. “There is just no controlled place where they are burning it off.”
Since the first shooting restrictions in 1989, the area’s population has grown by more than 200,000. There are not only thousands more shooters, but thousands more hikers, bikers, and campers potentially in the line of fire.
And closing public ranges has left shooters nowhere to go but into the woods.
“The effect is we have pushed all those people into unregulated shooting,” said El Paso County Commissioner Amy Lathen. “It’s a dangerous situation.”
A tightening of shooting restrictions seems almost inevitable.
Other National Forests next to large urban areas have more stringent controls in place. The forests in Southern California all limit shooting to a few designated areas. In the forests closest to Los Angeles, shooters must use privately managed ranges that charge a fee.
After safety and trash control efforts in the Tonto National Forest near Phoenix failed in 2000, the forest service banned shooting in 81,000 acres — an area four times the size of the Pike National Forest closure.
The Pike National Forest has no plans to change shooting rules, Landis said, noting the forest would have to go through a “huge process” that would likely take two years to change local regulations.
“It is really incumbent upon shooters to police themselves,” he said.
El Paso County is working to open a public shooting range that would relieve some of the pressure. The county has been trying since 2009 to find a suitable place. A deal seemed close in 2010 for land near the firing range on Fort Carson, but it fell through.
“Every place we have proposed a range, locals are opposed,” said Lathen, who has worked on the project. “It is very difficult to find the land but we continue to look at possibilities.”
Lathen said she is “very close” to reaching a deal with a private landowner in western El Paso County, but would not elaborate.
In the meantime, bullets keep flying. Three weeks ago this reporter was running on a marked trail on the south side of Mount Rosa. Gunfire echoed in the middle distance, but it seemed reasonable to assume the shooters were firing into a nearby hill, not across the valley. A few steps later a bullet struck a tree 15 feet ahead. Yelling did no good. The only thing to do was duck and run.
—
Contact the writer: 636-0223
Shoot, don’t shoot
Some of the Pike National Forest shooting regulations:
• No shooting in designated areas near the city and main roads. (See a map.)
• No shooting within 150 yards of an occupied area or campsite.
• Shoot only at an earthen backstop. Do not shoot at trees.
• Do not shoot glass or metal or trash.
• Do not shoot from a car, into a valley, or over a body of water.
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