Someone in my neighborhood called the police on me, my kids, and ....

some of their friends yesterday due to all of the shooting we were doing in my backyard.

This is the second time in 7 years someone called the police on us. The last time was about 6 months ago, and the local Sheriff's department sent one deputy to check us out.

This time, TWO squad cars came out. Fortunately, though, it was because they wanted to shoot with us. One of the officers remembered the earlier visit, so he brought a friend this time, hoping to get a little private range time in.

The deputies had a blast (no pun intended) and a good time was had by all.

That is a pretty cool story. I'm afraid I wouldn't be very high road if I knew which neighbors called in. I'd prolly call them and say, "Hey would you call the cops again tomorrow. Those guys sure were fun to shoot with."

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Actually, to complete the story, the neighbor that dropped the dime on me followed the officers onto my property. I went out to speak with him - NOT to get into an argument or fight with him (I actually wanted to apologize if we interrupted his Sunday afternoon nap and try to find a way to avoid annoying him in the future, if possible).

Once he saw it was me, he apologized profusely. He told me he thought it was a bunch of people hunting in the swamp behind his house. He said that, if he knew it was me shooting in my backyard, he would have asked to come shoot with us as well. Not sure how honest he was being, but I'll take it.

The officers said the first time they were called it was someone relatively far away from my house. But that day my kids were shooting some Mosin Nagants and some deer rifles, so the officers thought it might've been the greater noise from high-powered rifles that caused a neighbor to complain.

Where I live, it wouldn't be possible to (safely) do any shooting in the backyard. You must live out in the country somewhere, and have a big backyard.

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Safety is definitely paramount. I have four acres and live at the very end of a dirt road. All of my neighbors have at least four acres as well. My neighbor on one side has 14 acres.

My backyard is surrounded by a good sized creek and backs up to a thick swamp that elevates up from my backyard. The swamp serves as a very large buffer between my property and the property on the other side of the swamp. Where we shoot, we are actually shooting down into the swamp that starts to elevate right behind where we put our targets.

So it is extremely safe as far as backyard gun ranges go.

It's also very private, as we have large pines and other trees surrounding the property and the creek surrounds about 60% of my property. No one can see in, and we can't see out. And no cars travel in front of our house because the dirt road ends at my property.

We've got a couple of spring fed bass ponds as well, so it's really a nice little private Idaho (except that it's in Florida, not Idaho :-D).