Neighbor/terrorist-the beat goes on

[patrickg]

...so I'm doing a little brush hogging and notice a nice big tree had gone down. That is odd, why would a nice big "healthy" hackberry tree break a couple feet above the ground and fall over? Closer inspection reveals (look at exhibit "A" attached) that in the break imbedded in the wood is a FMJ rifle bullet. Looked at front of tree, aspect facing toward my gun happy neighbor's back yard, and noticed that the tree has been shot to s--t. We are talking a 5-6 foot circumference tree. Shot until it was so weakened it went over taking a nice limb off an adjaccent tree.

Couldn't get my Mc chain saw started so went to visit neighbor to south who came back with me and cut the tree into aprox 8ft sections that I can pick up with pallet forks to stack and burn. He says hackberry is no good for fire wood. As he cuts firewood commercially and I was trying to give it to him I figure he would have accepted it if it was any good. Anyway I will save the three pieces that contain most of the "shootem up" damage. One from below the break and the two from above (tree was bifurcated).

Will be filling a complaint with the sheriffs office and looking into possibilities and probabilities of what if any civil action may be taken to seek redress. This is not the only tree or object that he has riddled on my property. I was thinking of going for a restraining order as one deputy suggested but the deputy who came out to give me the complaint forms suggested an "EPO". Never heard of that. It is an Emergency Protective Order. It serves to put someone on notice to not do some list of things among which will be approach me, my wife, call us, get on our property, shoot in an unsafe manner toward our property and just about everything short of breathing that I can get a judge to include.

Justice would be if I could net enough $ suing him to put a 3/8 inch thick 8ft tall solid steel fence around him on the three sides we border him. Not likely, unfortunately.

If you look carefully in the picture along the terminator (line of demarcation between sun and shadow),you will see just to the right of center one of the FMJ bullets pointing toward 11 o'clock. My neighbor hit at least one bullet cutting the thing up for me.

Cuting the stump near the ground the wood looked A-1 prime condition, no bugs or rot. Same story above the break. The area of the brreak itself was realy homoginized, clearly it was localized damage and it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. I am preserving samples for later should there be a need to show anyone.

Too bad this guy wasn't flying somewhere back east this morning, just one more terrorist.

Patrick

 

[dmccarty]

In North Carolina destroying/stealing timber is against the law. Certainly the act would be covered under property destruction statutes. Course you have to prove the SOB did it. Did you/could you save any of the bullets......

Later...
Dan McCary

 

[TWINKLE_TOES]

Patrick,

Don't know nothing about Hackberry and it is hard to tell from the picture, but the area of the break doesn't look to healthy to me. Before you go to far out on a limb you might have an Arborist take a look at it. It doesn't appear to be the result of a sudden event.

Al

 

[Youare]

It appears that the tree in the picture has been in the line of fire for some time. I had a large pine tree in the backyard that had a piece of wood attached to it that we used to hang targets on. After 3 or 4 years of target practice on windy day the tree broke off at the place we shot at.

The tree in the picture shows some heartwood decay which usually happens after the tree suffers damage to the outer growing area, usually from a scrape. If this damage was caused by bullet holes and there are other trees close by they also should bear bullet scars too around the same height. You can aslo do a line of sight check back towards the direction they could have come from, unless they stood in front of the tree and blasted it.

 

[patrickg]

Thanks Al, conselling caution in these matters is appropriate. As I previously stated, we cut the tree off below and above the break. The wood on both sides of the break is solid, no bugs, no rot, no disease, perfect idealized growth ring picture. Yes, the wood at the break site doesn't look so good, which is why the tree fell down. The break site however had been thoroughly riddled with gunfire and yes many bullets will be collectible. The entry holes as previously stated are on the side of the tree facing his yard/shooting position. In this case just about anyone with a modicum of common sense will be able to look at the evidence I am preserving and see that the tree was otherwise healthy except for the part that was shotup. Not such a fine line or difficult judgement call as to require an arborist. Think how it would be if a person took a few hundred rounds of high powered gunfire in their waist. The rest of the corpse might be in the picture of health. Probably wouldn't take the FBI's top forensic scientists to figure the gun fire was the major reason the person came apart in the middle. An average Joe probably wouldn't chalk it up to to being to aggressive with ab exercises.

I only know how to attach one picture at a time and didn't want to drag it out but here is just one more shot showing the area above the break that will show what I was saying.

Unfortunately I don't see a clear path to a search warrant to collect his arsenal for comparison purposes. This is one of many trees he has shot up. One old oak is much much older/larger and has taken hundreds of rounds from this $%&*.

Patrick

 

[CVHoss]

Patrick,
Not ever having burned wood for heat, I'm no expert but, in my teenage years, one of the things I did to make money was cut and deliver firewood. Of the old-timers that I delivered wood to, I do remember the most requested types of wood being Ash and Hackberry.

As to the bullets. Keep as many samples as you can. If these are FMJ bullets, the wood of the tree should not have deformed them much and they should carry excellent rifling lines for a ballistics match. If it's possible to trace the angle of fire back to your neighbor's property, I would think that it should be possible for local law enforcement to get a search warrant to check for the offending firearm. It would seem that several laws have been broken here. Just deliberately firing the firearm toward your property could constitute reckless endangerment. The act of shooting into the tree should be destruction of private property. And mature trees sometimes have large dollar values. Just ask an insurance company that's ever paid out for the loss of a large shade tree hit by lightening. After all, this tree was very important to your family as you used it's shade for family outings and picnics, right?/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif Any chance this guy has a past felony record? If so, it should be illegal for him to even be in the same house as firearms that he has access to. I don't envy you having to deal with this jerk, but if he's shooting onto your property, I'd say it's gettin' time to get nasty.

Hoss

 

[patrickg]

Allow for the use of high powered rifles and magnum handguns and several hundred rounds. This guy might easily shoot over a hundred rounds a week and has been shooting here for a couple years but not exclusively this tree. I've owned the land surounding this guy since before he bought his 1.2 acres (3 yrs) but I've just been occupying my place for 7 months so I wasn't fully aware of the goings on. This is a visible sign that I can point to, I hope that makes the case that he is over the line (pun intended).

Patrick

 

[brewerbob]

Unfortunately, living in the country exposes you to some really strange things. While my neighbor doesn't shoot across the property, he does have a relative who shows up every summer. This year, he showed up with a pit bull. My lab is a male, but is not at all agressive, in fact, he'll beat you to death with his tail. We walk down to the road twice a day to get the paper, in the morning, and the mail in the afternoon. One of our first trips, here comes this pit bull. I yelled, and the guy called him back, and apologized. A few days later, I carried an axe handle, and here he comes again. Got all the way to my poor lab, and I took a swing at him and missed. His owner called him back and apologized again. I started packing heat after that. They're gone now, but I am determined that if this happens again, the dog is toast. I will not be threatened by someone's dog on my own property. Problem is, I need to get him on my property, and shoot him where I know the bullet is not going to endanger me or anyone else.
Bob

 

[patrickg]

Hoss, This is most curious, the great hackberry mystery. I have seen tables of heat output, ash content, and chimney contamination (creosote etc.) for various woods but didn't study them nor do I recall whether or not Hackberry was covered. If I can find reliable independent confirmation of the suitability of hackberry for firewood I'll revisit the issue with my neighbors son (early 40's I think) who told me it would goo up a chimney and so wasn't commercial. I was trying to give them the wood, about a rick, so they could make a buck on it, after all he came right over and cut it in 8 ft lengths for me (so I could stack it with my pallet forks and burn it once he saw it was hackberry and not of commercial interest with him).

Anybody out there know aout burning hackberry????/

I'm keeping three sections of the tree, one from below the break to the break and two from above the break as it broke off at a groin. I'll either give the rest away or dispose of it. I will keep those sections for any future value as evidence. There was only one bullet in plain sight (partially imbedded in the wood at the break). My friend/neighbor says he hit at least one with the saw. I'm sure there is a plethora of bullets in the sections I'm saving. I noticed on TV that carpenters/woodworkers using recycled materials employ small accurate hand held metal detectors to find nails and nail fragments. If I split the pieces, I'm saving I'm sure to recover plenty but might preserve the samples intact for a while. Don't want to mess up evidence prematurely.

Regarding a determination of the origin of the bullets: anyone could have done it but all the visible evidence shows the shooter to have been directly north of the tree. Directly north of the tree is my neighbors yard. Of course space aliens could have beamed down and tested their copies of our weapons from his yard. He spends a fair amount of time shooting in his yard. I can't tell where the bullets impact and am not seriously interested in being directly downrange to make a determination. Considering that I've seen this guy blasting away at 100 yds (his lot is 350 ft deep) with his wife riding a mower back and forth through his line of fire. So far he hasn't shot her. I just want to use this tree thing as a lever to begin racheting down on this guy. In truth, if he never fired another shot into or across any of my property or in a manner that was unsafe and had a fair probability of resulting in a ricochette onto my property I could forget the tree. As the former is about as likely as glaciers forming in Alabama this fall, the later is not a realistic consideration.

I am not anti-gun per se and own guns (rifles, pistols, shotguns, muzzle loading flintlocks, recurve bows, compound bows, slingshots etc. myself B U T I am a S A F E shooter. Being keenly aware of the difference between safe and careless shooting makes this especially frightening to me. My property extends 1/2 mile of gently rolliing partially/sparsely treed land behing him. I need to brush hog it, tend to some erosion, do pond maint. and just traverse it at will without taking incoming rounds. My neighbors aren't happy but are intimidated by an ex cop with a reputation for having killed in the double digits while on the force (prior to his being drummed out of the corps). I'm not smart enough to be completely inhibited by fear. I have a healthy respect for a heavily armed sniper instructor socieopath (sp?) who has tied up and beaten his wife, shot out all her car tires, and put a gun to her head. (Yeah they hauled him off and confiscated his arsenal but after detox his lawyer got all his guns back for him after the wife dropped all charges.) I don't think someone he doesn't love would get much consideration.

Is he a felon? Yes and no. To my way of thinking he is a felon or worse but hasn't been convicted.

Time to get nasty? Nah I don't get nasty without a tremendous provacation and this guy isn't close. I will however make it a pastime to exercise what legal leverage I can to ensure the safety of my property and anyone on it.

Also see my post regaring the final resolution of my box blade issues with the manufacturer. So I close this to author that post.

Patrick

 

[ddl]

From the chart I got from this web address: http://hearth.com/what/heatvalues.html Hacberry has a higher burn value then Elm. Interesting site,

Dan L