On the Firing Line : Shooting Grounds Have Been Turned Into Something of a Disaster Area

The senses are assaulted as in a war zone.

Hear the gunfire. Smell the cordite in the air. See the children playing on the bare ground littered with trash and broken glass and empty shell casings, among trees shot lifeless.

Now a marksman takes aim and squeezes off a series of rapid-fire rounds. Scratch another refrigerator.

This is a weekend at the Kentucky Public Shooting Area--or is it a public dump? That question has brought recreational shooters and the U.S. Forest Service to a faceoff over continued use of the site in the Tujunga District of the Angeles National Forest, off County Road N3 to Palmdale.

Jack Boudreaux, a shooter from from Sunland, says: “It’s shameful. People should clean up after themselves. Shooting here is a privilege, not a right.”

Jim, a shooter from Valencia who declines to give his last name, says: “It’s ridiculous. I’m using other people’s trash for targets.”

Dan Vellinga is there with members of the Roosevelt Community Church of Lancaster for their annual turkey shoot--clay pigeons are the targets, turkeys the prizes.

“When we come out, we always police our own stuff,” Vellinga said. “Not everybody does that.”

Obviously.

There’s also an uncomfortable mixture of beer and bullets, but the Forest Service provides little supervision. Only Level IV personnel--those authorized to carry guns--patrol the area, and they are stretched so thin, they can’t make more than a couple of passes a day, if that. As soon as the green pickup truck goes over the hill, it’s Dodge City again.

“It cannot go on the way it is,” says Susan Swenson, the forest’s recreation officer. “It’s unsafe. The (district) ranger is going to have to develop a program to get this cleaned up.”

The district ranger, Clara Johnson, agrees: “I hear comments like, ‘I don’t feel safe when I come here.’ The other problem is it looks like a dump. A lot of people are very unhappy coming here. But they come here because this is the only one (in the Tujunga District) open right now.

“I think most of the people want it cleaned up. But that means closing it down, which means they can’t shoot for a while.”

But that is exactly what has been happening. Ed Bickford, who sells ammunition at his little store, the Ammo Dump, a few miles up the road toward Los Angeles, fears that closing the area would destroy his business.

He says sales fell off 50% last February when the Forest Service closed the Middle Creek Public Shooting Area half a mile from his store. So Bickford has been at Kentucky raking and scooping behind the firing lines with a few volunteers the last three weekends, as the shooting continued.

He has hauled away two truckloads of trash, but the area covers 630 acres.

Bickford agrees with Johnson that a mass cleanup should not be allowed while people are shooting. Recently, he has gone along the firing line signing up volunteers to return for a weekend operation, not yet scheduled. He hopes to get about 500; he has about 300.

“Great,” Johnson says. “If I can close it for one or two days and we can have 200 or 300 volunteers out here, we can get it cleaned up.”

Bickford says he’s waiting for Johnson to say when. Last week, she wrote him that she expects to have a “complete proposal by March.”

There are only five public shooting areas still open in the Angeles Forest, which covers one-fourth of Los Angeles County. Two require hike-ins. One, operated by a concessionaire, charges $6 for admission.

It’s easy to see how Kentucky got the way it is. Signs are posted prohibiting alcoholic beverages, but they’re shot full of holes.

“The signs make it through one weekend,” Swenson says.

Some of the shooters bring in beer--then shoot the empties full of holes. Who’s going to tell a loaded shooter with a loaded gun not to litter?

There once were several trash barrels in the area, but now there are only two--both at the entrance off N3. Otherwise, there is no place to dispose of trash.

“Trash cans lasted two weeks before (shooters) had ripped them off the chains and utilized them as targets,” Swenson says.

Bickford says: “I buy that (the Forest Service is) short of funds, but for the last five years they have alloted zero funds for cleaning the ranges, and that is the number one user group in the forest.”

Kentucky draws a come-and-go crowd in the hundreds on a typical weekend. Since the Forest Service stopped providing trash cans, the resourceful shooters have brought their own targets from home: old refrigerators, water heaters, microwaves, motorcycles, car doors, hubcaps.

Says Johnson: “This is a way for them to get rid of stuff they don’t want at their homes. You can’t dump on National Forest lands. That’s the law.”

So much for the law.

Bickford says the violators are not typical shooters, adding: “It’s always a small number that screw it up for everybody.”

There is no water and no toilet--not even an outhouse.

Johnson says: “I’m not sure the people are there long enough to have that problem. They use up all the shells they have brought and leave.”

And without supervision, Swenson fears the consequences of somebody shooting at an occupied outhouse. As it is, she says: “We’ve had injuries and several deaths.”

An off-duty policeman discovered what was ruled a double homicide at Middle Creek a year ago. From 1981, when Kentucky opened, through 1987, there have been three reported accidental woundings, all self-inflicted.

At one time, according to Johnson, the Forest Service marked shooting lanes, but they are barely discernible. A reporter and a photographer, their car partially hidden by brush, drove directly into the line of fire of a man with a large handgun, who saw them coming just in time.

Dan and Julie Barnes have been coming to the range from Lancaster for three years.

“There were a lot more trees last year,” he says.

The trees were shot down.

One of Johnson’s options is to accept Bickford’s army of volunteers. Another is to close Kentucky.

“We have no budget for the Kentucky Shooting Area,” she says. “(But) I have no plans on closing it right now. We need to have a shooting area open for the public.”

Swenson also stops short of giving the untidy shooters an ultimatum, saying: “It is a valid recreational activity. I enjoy target shooting myself. But to provide a quality experience (and) to ensure safety, it has to be physically managed during operative hours. I believe all the shooting areas should have adequate bathroom facilities, picnic-type facilities and trash facilities.”

The Forest Service could turn Kentucky over to a concessionaire or make it a private club.

At the end of the road, past the Kentucky area, is the Desert Marksmen’s Club, which operates on a special use permit from the Forest Service and charges annual dues of $40. Beyond the locked gate to the club, there is no trash--a condition of the permit.

Club member Dan MacDonald of Palmdale, who used to shoot at Kentucky, says: “Supervision has nothing to do with it. Common sense does.”

The Forest Service plans to reopen Middle Creek with a concessionaire, who proposes to build structures in what Bickford says is a flood plain, where 13 people perished when the middle fork of Big Tujunga Creek overflowed in 1978.

Earlier, the Saugus Ranger District assigned the Dry Public Shooting Area to a concessionaire. Bickford says the shooters grumble about the $6 admission charge.

And there aren’t even any refrigerators to shoot at.