LOCALmatters
Neighbors Are Fired Up About Target Shooting on National Forest Land S T O RY & PHO TO S BY MOLLY WAL SH
T
here’s no sign announcing that Sparks Pit is a firing range, but gun enthusiasts head to the scrubby clearing in the Green Mountain National Forest to shoot at paper targets and makeshift ones: beer cans, car doors and old televisions. Neighbors on the dirt road next to the former gravel pit in Ripton want a cease-fire. They say the informal range, where many local youths learned to shoot, has become noisy, dangerous and too popular with outsiders. They also say bullets fly perilously close to a forest road used by walkers and hikers
18 LOCAL MATTERS
SEVEN DAYS
09.27.17-10.04.17
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
ENVIRONMENT
in summer and skiers and snowmobilers in winter. The selectboard of the mountain hamlet near Middlebury agrees. Last month, its members wrote a letter asking the U.S. Forest Service to ban shooting there. No one has been hit, but selectboard member Perry Hanson is no longer comfortable bicycling past the pit. “It’s not good,” he said. So far, federal officials haven’t heeded the call. They point out that Addison County has many hunters but no designated firing range and that shooting is lawful in the 400,000-acre Green Mountain National Forest. “There is nothing about Sparks Pit itself that is inherently unsafe to practice shooting in,” said John Sinclair, forest supervisor of the Green Mountains and Finger Lakes National Forests.
Sparks Pit is a sandy clearing shaped like a shallow bowl and surrounded by low embankments. No houses or roads are visible from the pit. Seven Days visited the site with neighbors Chris Pike and Tom Draude on September 20. Nobody was firing, but the smell of gunpowder lingered in the air. Two main targets had been set up in a straight-shot lane in front of a small berm of earth. One of the targets, at 50 feet, was a bullet-riddled metal stepladder on which people may set cans. Chris Pike standing near signs he posted
At 100 yards, five paper targets were attached to a propped-up wooden pallet. The bull’s-eyes had just one or two hits, and that’s part of the problem, according to critics. They say scattered, inaccurate shooting is sending bullets too close to Forest Road 54, the dirt lane that is about 150 feet from the pit. Pike noted bullet holes in trees that show people sometimes fire toward the road. “This is not what responsible shooters do,” said Pike, pointing to spent shotgun shells, shattered clay pigeons, shot-up playing cards, shattered beer bottles and even a frying pan battered by bullets. “It’s pretty bad.” The former firefighter lives a fiveminute walk from Sparks Pit with his wife and two children. He owns several guns. But he doesn’t fire them in the pit, and he’s pushing to end target shooting there.
Draude lives even closer — about 200 yards from the pit’s entrance. He, too, wants it closed to shooting. The retired property manager built his log cabin back in the 1980s and recalls that gunshots then were occasional. Long ago, he shot his gun at Sparks Pit. And Draude and his wife would sometimes go there to watch the sunset, because the clearing opens up a patch of sky amid the dense tree canopy. “It was nothing like this,” said Draude as he walked the pit with Pike. “People used to sight their guns for hunting and it took four, five shots and you’re done.”
day and night, sometimes leaving empty bottles of Budweiser behind. Draude doesn’t shoot there, saying he doesn’t want to be part of what he considers irresponsible behavior. One of his concerns is the shooting of explosive targets, as evinced by an empty jar of the powdered explosive Tannerite on the ground at the pit. Some shooters revel in the loud booms. The neighbors? Not so much. “It’s equal to half a stick of dynamite,” a glum Pike said as he pointed at the Tannerite jar. “That shakes the windows in our house.”
Shot-up stepladder
Frying pan used for target practice
Those were the days when Sparks Pit was a local secret. But it’s now mentioned on internet sites, including ones frequented by shooters in neighboring states. According to Pike, the Three Percenters militia group held a training exercise there a few years ago. Seven Days reached out to the group via email but did not hear back. Target shooting in gravel pits is a timehonored tradition in Vermont, because the pits have earthen backstops that absorb bullets. Though the pits are not designed as ranges, some local officials make little or no fuss about the practice. But controversies about both informal and designated ranges have surfaced in various towns, including Williston, Charlotte, Goshen and Lincoln. And now, complaints are increasing in Ripton, where shooters arrive with rounds and rounds of ammo and fire
About six miles away from Sparks Pit on Route 7 in Middlebury, Vermont Field Sports sells a full range of firearms and ammo. Its walls are decorated with stuffed wildlife: bass, buck, bear and fox. Store manager Greg Boglioli has heard complaints about Sparks Pit. Some of the trash at the pit last Wednesday, including the empty jar of Tannerite, had price tags from Vermont Field Sports. Boglioli said the store stopped selling the stuff this summer after complaints. “People were getting uptight about Tannerite,” he said. And the explosive serves just one purpose, he explained: “They just want to hear a bang.” The days when you could just go out your back door and shoot, or use a neighbor’s property, are long gone, Boglioli said. Everybody now is worried