A Culture Clash Over Guns Infiltrates the Backcountry

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/us/a-culture-clash-over-guns-infiltrates-the-backcountry.html?_r=1

“Every time in the woods, you feared for your life,” said Paul Magnuson, who owns a cycle shop in Woodland Park, Colo.. “It was absolutely, completely out of hand.”
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The federal agencies that manage national forests and open lands have tallied a growing number of shooting violations in the backcountry in recent years. The Forest Service recorded 1,712 shooting incidents across the country last year, up about 10 percent from a decade ago. More than a thousand of those reports ended with a warning or citation, but in some, Forest Service officers did not find the shooters or evidence of a violation after investigating a complaint.
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Bureau of Land Management officials want to permanently ban shooting because they say it is jeopardizing hundreds of petroglyphs that Native Americans pecked onto sandstone outcroppings and boulders as long as 10,000 years ago. Advocates say the mountainside is an open-air museum, one where bullets have struck the petroglyphs, chipping and cracking the runic swirls and wiry images of people and animals. “We’ve had serious damage,” said Kevin Oliver, district manager for the bureau’s West Desert district. “The shooting was so dense we had to do something.”
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There have also been about 130 wildfires here over the past decade, some caused by bullet ricochets or exploding targets igniting dry cheatgrass. One bullet flew across the range and hit a bedpost in a nearby home, and land officials said that high school students on a bus had to take cover to avoid careless gunfire. Cleanup crews have hauled away 20 tons of trash a year — refrigerators and car parts, clay pigeons and sofas, even bowling pins. “Anything you don’t want in your garage, you take out there and shoot,” said Mr. Acerson, a retired state transportation worker.