I’m so sorry you and the folks in your overly priced gated community must hear gunshots fired in the morning. What a travesty. God forbid anyone upset you and your fellow residents behind that huge wall. Maybe if they built the wall a few meters higher the sound wouldn’t travel into your high priced, gated heaven : )
Landfall woman irked by duck hunters
Sound of gunfire bothers residents, but hunters not out of line
By Veronica Gonzalez
Staff Writer
veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com
Duck hunters are putting Janice Alexander in a fowl mood.
Her 6 a.m. alarm is the sound of gunshots fired from around Howe Creek behind her Landfall home.
She’s not the only one complaining.
Alexander is one of about a dozen Landfall residents who have contacted authorities, dismayed about duck hunters waking them up in the early morning hours nearly every day since about Jan. 1.
But Wilmington police said Wednesday they can’t do anything about Howe Creek hunters because that area is out of the city’s jurisdiction.
And the county can’t do anything either unless a hunter poses a threat to a person or property.
The main difference is that hunting isn’t allowed within the city limits, while it is allowed in the county.
So Landfall residents are wondering what they can do to make the hunters cease fire, so to speak.
“I don’t think they ought to be allowed to shoot this close to homes,” Alexander said.
Duck hunting season, which has been on and off since October, ends next week.
“Thank God we only have a few more days to go,” Alexander said.
Gil DuBois, who is affiliated with the Wilmington chapter of Ducks Unlimited, said he hasn’t heard the complaints.
But he said it’s not surprising that people can hear gunshots that clearly.
“In the wintertime, noise travels further because all the leaves are off the trees,” said DuBois, who hunts only in remote areas.
“There’s a lot of things you can hear in the wintertime that you can’t hear in the summertime.”
He said ducks are up and down the Intracoastal Waterway just about anywhere there’s water. They’re migrating from north to south to places where water hasn’t frozen.
They have stopped here because “ducks are only going to fly so far and expend so much energy,” he said.
Hunters are taking advantage.
But unless hunters are in Bradley, Shinn or Hewlett’s Creek, city police can’t penalize them for discharging a firearm.
Creeks outside the city’s jurisdiction are Howe Creek as well as Whiskey Creek. Those are in the county’s jurisdiction, but it’s up to county law enforcement to judge if someone is being unsafe with a firearm, said New Hanover County Manager Bruce Shell, who added this is the first time he’s heard such complaints since he has been in his position.
He said he spoke with a resident who was going to explore approaching the county about a change in the county’s ordinance.
“We could make the ordinance more restrictive,” Shell said. “There is teeth in the ordinance. It may not be as restrictive as some folks would like.”
The penalty for discharging a firearm in the city limits is a $500 fine or 30 days in jail, said Wilmington police Lt. Jeff Allsbrook, who added he didn’t remember receiving phone calls about this issue either.
The penalty for discharging a firearm in the county is $500.
Fines or no fines, Alexander just wants to resume her peaceful way of life in the home where she has lived for two years.
Blue herons perch on a tree in the marshland behind her two-story home near where the Intracoastal Waterway and Howe Creek converge. Egrets, geese, swans, seagulls and ducks roam the land and rule the air, so she also is concerned about the bird sanctuaries near her home.
The sound of gunshots shatter the silence, scare the birds and make them scatter, she said.
Hunters have no place there, Alexander said.
“Why should their pleasure encroach on anybody else’s pleasure, peace or tranquility every morning?” she asked.
Veronica Gonzalez: 343-2008
veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com
…just as a side not apparently a nice, plump lady was on the local news this morning from “Landfill” wearing a fur coat complaining that a bullet might hit there house. Uggghhh….
