No shooting in the National Forest!

[DallanC]

Took the family for a drive up in the mountains sunday. We were miles off the paved road, miles from any camping areas. I pulled off the dirt road in a nice open spot with a great backstop against the mountain and we set up a single coke can at 5 yards and let my boy practice some shooting (1 round at a time) with my LCP. We'd been there maybe 25 minutes for all of maybe 20 rounds when a Forest Service guy races up and proceeds to give us all kinds of grief for "shooting".

After letting him rant for a couple minutes I cut him off and politely asked what is the actual problem, we are well away from anyone else, we are being very careful, there are no buildings, camps within at least a mile of us (no camping allowed in this particular area), no hikers, good backstop. He spluttered for a minute and said "well its just not a good idea so you need to leave".

As we were really about to leave anyway (had 4 bullets left), and moreso that I had my wife and boy next to me, I said ok. Had they not been there I'd have told him to ticket me or F'off. We were legal and he knew it, he just wanted to throw his weight around.

Ticks me off to no end how just having a gun makes you a criminal in the eyes of other people.


-DallanC

[Dunkem]

Can he be reported? Sounds like a person using his position as a control device

[Martymcfly73]

Was this up AF canyon?

[DallanC]

[Martymcfly73]

Interesting that the fire above about cede hills was started by target shooters and the sheriff and forest service rep I talked to said since it was BLM nothing could be done. I spoke of this incident to the incident commander as we were being released from the fire and he said the FS employee did not know what they were talking about. Just an FYI.

[DallanC]

Yea... had my boy and wife not been standing right next to me I'd have let the guy have it. I keep alot of info on my phone regarding ordinance info for various laws

The first part of this week I got out camping with the family on the skyline drive. We were checked by a DWR officer while fishing on a lake, I asked if he knew of any restrictions on shooting in those parts and he said "Nope! Pick a safe spot and have fun!". Nice guy. My boy got to do quite a bit of shooting his new big game rifle. Things were really lush and green up on top so I wasnt concerned with fires (but I did have shovel and other things ready in the rare case something did start up).


-DallanC

[Martymcfly73]

All it really takes is a little common sense. But sometimes that's in short supply.