Has anyone ever shot down a tree?

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I've seen plenty of trees shot down. It really pisses me off though, especially when its public land.

There are 2 things that get public lands closed to shooting.

1. shooting down trees
2. littering

We have few enough public places to shoot that we need to work hard to keep them.
 
Shooting the top out of a hemlock for a xmas tree is an old Adirondack tradition.

Years ago, while touring the Smithsonian, I recall seeing a chunk of a VERY large tree, maybe 24" in diameter or so. It had been shot in two during a Civil War battle by the sheer volume of lead flying around. It been years, wish I could remember more. I do recall being VERY impressed!
 
It happened during the Civil War at Spotsylvania Court House (Bloody Angle). A piece of the tree is at the Smithsonian and the Atlanta Historical Center.

Me? I don't shoot down trees. I hug them. ;)
 
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Never shot one down.


Gave one lead poisoning, though. I was still in high school, and I'd put a target up on this tree in the back yard and shoot with my pellet gun.


The leaves began to turn a sickly yellow after a while. I didn't make the connection, though.

One day a friend of my Dad was over, and since he was a botanist with the county, Dad asked him to take a look at the tree. We all wandered out into the back yard and looked at it. The guy took one look at the tree and said with a puzzled tone, "It looks like lead poisoning to me." There was a pause.


And they both looked at ME!


:D


The tree lived once I carved all the pellets out of the trunk. :eek:
 
4v50, thanks for the post and info! I'm glad somebody else knows about it. I've related the story many times over the years( roughly 25 years now) and LOTS of people refuse to believe me, or those that do insist I must be talking about a sapling. And brother, it wern't no sapling.........
 
Yes I have. Good times :)

Trees are dangerous so I always feel good when another one goes down...it's for the children!
 
This post made me 'memba about a time years ago at camp. I had tacked a target to a birch tree in the back of camp. It may have been 4 or 5 inches diameter. I was shooting a couple different .22's at it for a while and then took some shots with my SP101 in .357. I went up to examine the target and on the way back to the spot I was shooting from the tree decided to pay me back. Darn thing fell right over entangling me in the branches. :cuss: Never even gave that a thought. :rolleyes: Haven't shot at trees since then.
 
Yep. I was out with my dad one time, and we took down a tree with his .54 muzzleloader. I didn't actually mean to knock the thing down, I was just shooting at a target that was tacked onto it. Was rather amusing and quite a surprise, though. ;-)
 
Not me personally, but my friend shot off a branch from a tree with a shotgun. Sad thing was the branch was like 5 feet right and 5 feet up from the target!
 
Gee I thought we were the only kids that ever blew down trees with our 12 gauges :rolleyes: I guess not
 
Reading through all the posts has reminded me of another tree incident. We had neighbor trouble when I was a teenager with a neighbor that didn't want us shooting. He made some wild claims that errant bullets were winding up in his driveway (he later admitted he made them up) and called 3 different police agencies with jurisdiction in our area before he found an officer that supported his view and threatened us with prosecution for reckless discharge. I was speaking with another police officer who was referred to us as the local "expert" on reckless discharge issues and after telling me that there was no way we were going to be prosecuted for what occured in that jurisdiction he gave me a pretty stern lecture about not shooting into trees - we had been target shooting at a target attached to an oak with about a 3 foot diameter trunk (and no, we didn't even come close to cutting it down, it's still alive and thriving) - reminded me that it took two hundred years for that tree to grow and we could kill it with just a few target shooting sessions.

I'm a homeowner now, who only wishes I had a beautiful tree like that for shade for my house. That lecture stuck with me and as both a tree lover and a shooter I only attach targets to trees that I want removed.
 
My class at the police academy did a little impromptu pruning of a large maple that was right behind the berm. We were shooting prone from about ten yards in one of our drills. I was the "off-man" in our line of three, so I was just sort of chilling behind the shooters, when I heard one coach say to another, "Say, do you think any of those shots are going over the dirt?" At that very moment, and considerable limb tumbled to earth. "Cease Fire!!" :rolleyes:
 
Of Course...
Many times...
Then you have the stumps to deal with.:p

Logs count too...especially the one blocking passage to beaver dam and the dynamite we were totin' in the jonboat weren't for fishin'...honest. :D

"you ain't"
"yes I am, hold my coffee and hand me my small bag...steady the boat"
"Oh Nelllllie"
blam, blam, blam, blam...blam....
" we can get through now...you hear me ( tossing spent hulls at buddy)HEY! I said can you hear me...open your eyes...I'm done now"
:D
 
Not cut one down, but lit a small stand of trees on fire with an M2 while doing familiarization fire. The bummer was that it shut the range down for a couple hours, which severely limited the amount of shooting we were able to get in. :mad:
 
Re-reading the thread just reminded me of another tree/gun story.

My dad has a great story he likes to tell about a great-uncle (I think) in Maine 70 or 80 years ago, who kept the county road crew from cutting down some beautiful old elm trees on the right of way by sitting on his porch with a shotgun across his knees. Those trees are still there if dutch elm disease hasn't got them.
 
Yep.
My brother and I used to start at the top of a dead tree with .22LR rifles and shoot a section at a time off until we had the whole thing cut down.
 
Yup, sent it packing

Right after that son of a Beech hit on me, I said "Sorry I don't swing that way!".
 
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