Crack … crack, crack, crack!
We’ve been out of the truck for about 30 seconds when we hear the unmistakable sound of gunfire.
Crack!
The fifth shot is important. Any more than five bullets in quick succession and you’re immediately dealing with, at a minimum, someone who has a rifle that holds more bullets than it should.
Silence.
“Want to go take a look?” says our guide.
We are being shown around the southeast corner of Westlock County, a location that’s been in the news recently.
A gun range had been ‘discovered’ after a fast moving wildfire started on Crown land and burned over a few quarters northwards and threatened Spruce Hill Estate.
Wildfire is a risk almost everywhere in Alberta at this time of year, but for residents living in the area surrounding Echo Lake, that risk can be minimized.
The wildfires and gunshots are symptoms of a much larger problem.
There’s been trespassing by quad riders and hunters, clandestine shooting ranges, fences being cut and livestock turned loose. Crops have been trampled and garbage has been dumped. There have been reports of stolen vehicles, and worst of all, residents being threatened when standing up for themselves.
It’s a situation that’s lead one local to describe the picturesque woodland area “like a war zone.”
While such a statement might seem emotive and hyperbolic, when it was said during the public forum at the May 19 Westlock County council meeting, it was from a place of frustration.
That ‘war zone’ claim came from residents after years of inaction by almost every agency and stakeholder responsible for insuring that area residents are safe in their homes.
For the 20 or so people who brought these issues to last week’s county council meeting, it’s just another step in the fight against that inaction.
They came with grievances, supported by a petition signed by 50 residents, but they also came with solutions.
Bevin McNally and his family have farmed quarters north of Echo Lake for over 100 years.
He and his neighbors are not anti-hunting, or anti-quadding, they make an effort to stress that. They are, however, against having their property burned down, and shot up.
Of all the people who attended and spoke at the county council meeting, McNally is one of the most supportive of the right to use pubic land, but he’s also one of most vocal on how the current situation can’t continue.
“It’s every year now we get a fire though somewhere in this 30-mile or 20-mile area,” McNally said.
“They come out here, they leave their campfire going, they throw a cigarette butt in the grass. Their quads, their bikes … they take the spark arrester out and it shoots sparks out and they go through the muskeg and drop sparks.”
In the last few years McNally and other residents have fought wildfires across the area, including one at bottom of his pasture and the road at the end of his driveway.
“When you see that fire coming at you, as a land owner, as a house owner, you can’t explain the feeling you have,” McNally said.
“The one two years ago coming up my pasture, It was crazy. And then the one 10 years ago was even crazier.”
Two weeks ago, his neighbors came together, and using rakes and burlap sacks, fought a fire started by shooters at a gun range on Crown land. It took a number of days, many firefighters, county workers, trucks, graders, three planes and a helicopter to contain it.
The shooters apparently fired a flare round from a shotgun that ricocheted off the side of the old gravel pit and ignited tinder-dry scrub.
The range seems to be the worst kept secret in the county. Many people knew the old gravel pit was there, and could be used to squeeze off as many rounds as you wanted, but no one, apart from local residents, have tried to do anything about it.
Standing on the edge of the range, the ‘war zone’ claim seems fair. Shell casing form a carpet at the edge of a pit that could fill in for a bomb crater from a ‘B grade’ movie.
Visiting the sometimes shooting range on May 29 just past 9 a.m. is when we hear the gun shots. On the quarter of Crown land east of the range, two men, both with significant military service, are target shooting and they’re happy to chat about how they came to be out shooting on this quarter of land.
Like many who come to use the public spaces around here, the pair are from the Edmonton.
Their first names are Martin and Pete and they’re shooting at paper targets which are all resting about halfway down a thick sandy ridge. They shoot at the site about once every two weeks and are responsible gun owners.
On this occasion they had with them at least three rifles — all were legal, unmodified and with five-shot magazines.
Martin said they picked up all their casings, targets and other trash, and glancing around the area that seems to be true. And they are just as appalled at the condition of the nearby range, where the fire started, as everyone else.
“It’s disgusting,” Martin said. “When I was driving in with him [Pete], I said look at all this, there’s garbage everywhere.
Martin said one of his neighbors showed him the public land he was now shooting on and that he uses it because it’s out of the way and nicer than the bomb crater.
“It’s a safe place,” he said. “But I go early in the morning, on a week day, and there’s nobody here. I’ve never seen anyone with beer or doing whatever.
“We just come here, pop off a few rounds, pick up our stuff … yeah, it’s sad if they would close the place because of those idiots.”
McNally believes shooters like Martin and Pete, who are doing nothing illegal, are not the reason for the fires or other issues area residents are experiencing.
All three know that the reality is a few bad apples are spoiling it for everyone. Yet at the same time, with no oversight in the area, one of the options might be to limit access for everyone.
McNally is not the kind of person to pull the ‘not in my back yard’ argument, but after years of dealing with the fallout, he’s becoming that way.
“According to him [Martin] it’ll push the problem somewhere else. Unfortunately, I guess if it got it out of our area … ,” McNally said with a shrug.
“That’s probably what’s happened. We’re seeing more pressure with quads, maybe it’s because that’s what the Redwater area did and made it foot access.”
It’s not just people coming out and using the clandestine ranges. If it was, it might be a bit easier for the locals to take. Hunters who trespass on private property and who fire weapons close to homes compound the problem as residents are finding bullet holes in their homes and outbuildings.
McNally said a bullet hit a fuel tank in his yard, which is about 500 metres from Crown land.
“When I said that day at the (county) meeting that I had a shell hit my fuel tank I wasn’t lying. That happened a few years back,” McNally.
“I’m a hunter. It’s just unfortunate they’ve made this such a mess. If those guys would come out here, do their shooting, clean up their mess after and go, there would never be an issue.”
The other separate, but related problem are quad riders.
Just like guns, and wildfires, quad bikes are part and parcel of life in rural Alberta.
Yet there is growing displeasure among locals that some quadders don’t care about anyone but themselves.
On the way back from the old gravel pit/shooting range, McNally points out a trail along a quarter line that leads to an abandoned oil pump. A few years ago the dirt track was grown over and the only person that went up there was the guy doing a weekly check on the pump.
Now, the dusty track is open all year because of the increase in quad and snowmobile traffic.
“The last five years, it’s gotten worse every year,” McNally said. “I mean these places are making piles of money on quads and side-by-sides. Right in Edmonton they’re telling these people, ‘Oh yeah, come right out here.’
“That one woman that lives over east of here she said they’ve got it on Facebook, right into the back of her property.
Again, McNally and others could take the extra riders if all they were doing was sticking to public byways and Crown land.
“Yes, there’s a lot of family people that want to come out here and just ride around on the trails. But you’ve got the guys that just go ripping through here.
“I would hate to see these trails shut down for these quaders — my son used to quad through these trails.”
Residents also say that the vast majority of fence cutting and crop damage is because of quad riders not respecting private property.
Cutting fences means stock can and do get out. Trashing crops means that yields are reduced. Such acts of vandalism cost land owners and farmers money, not to mention time and effort.
McNally says the issue has gotten worse since Westlock County formalized camping at Echo Lake three years ago and he’s been opposed to the site since the beginning.
“I disagreed with them starting this thing in the first place,” he said. “It’s money spent, I think, that could be spent somewhere else.”
Rather than reduce the incidence of quad bikers in the area, the Echo Lake campground seems to have had the opposite effect.
Riders have been using the area as staging post, despite the small, but clear signs saying they are not to be used in the campground.
The grounds are not staffed and monitoring is left to the county’s peace officer, who can’t be everywhere in the county at once.
“Unfortunately, the people who came out here for the May long weekend, they don’t want to come in here either because if there are families in here they can’t party all night,” said McNally.
“So they’ll still go back in the bush so that they can party and nobody can say anything to them.”
A number of locals who confronted quad riders and hunters trespassing on private land say they were threatened.
And many of the people who spoke about the issue at last Tuesday’s county council meeting asked that their names weren’t used in this article.
Residents have launched a petition that calls for three areas of action; the closure of a road used to access Crown land, supervision of Echo Lake campground and increased law enforcement activity.
Next week the Westlock News looks at who is responsible, and how they might go about, fixing the issues.
