Trespassing with weapons. Possibly pressing charges.

[Ryan]

So today, 3 friends and I decided to go to a publicly owned forest about 15 minutes away from where I live to do some shooting. We had a bunch of old stuff, mainly shitty PC monitors from the 90's, etc. We had two 12 guages and two 410's, one of the 12's was pump action and the other was a semi-auto. This was my friend's usual shooting place, he's gone there for a few years now with no trouble, he's talked to cops while down there, he's got all his licenses and permits to carry and use the stuff, people shoot down there all the time, so we set off.

We get there, load up, teach a friend of ours how to shoot, and then had some fun throwing discs into the air. After about 15 minutes, a cop shows up and asks us what we're doing. We tell him, everything's fine, he calls to report in what we were doing. He was a nice guy, and he was planning on making sure we were allowed to be out there so he wouldn't have to make us leave, except apparently the Department of Natural Resources had a different view of it. Every year, for one week, they shut the forest down to everyone. They don't do anything with it, they just shut it down, and they put a sign up on the road. We didn't see the sign, but more on that later. Some DNR guy comes down to talk to us, runs the serials of the guns, calls his boss, and tells us to wait by the truck. We wait for a whole hour and a half for this guy to get there, and we still have no idea what's going on. Finally his boss gets there, talks to the cop and the lower DNR guy for a few minutes, then calls us over.

Basically, we were trespassing on "temporarily private property", on a closed road (which was fine before, because everyone shoots on it), with weapons. And DNR is thinking of pressing charges. He told us it was a different ball game to them because we can all be tried as adults. He made us pick up all of the broken pieces of the discs, all the shells, and give us our SSN's and phone numbers to give so an officer. We're all supposed to expect calls from this officer, and we can either get warnings, tickets, or be taken all the way to court.

I really think they're making a big deal out of this, and I'm pretty sure he was messing with us to some degree, but it wasn't funny. Something like that could lose all of us our jobs, not to mention eligibility for state-paid scholarships.

This is what we get for trying to spend time with some friends before they move off to college in a couple weeks.

tl;dr - I was shooting with some friends on land that has always been open when we've gone before, turns out it was closed at random, and now we might have charges pressed on us.

inb4youreadumbredneck. Shooting guns != redneck.

Intelligent people /discuss.

[crex]

Daum! Getting charged for an accident.
Gay shit cop is gay.

[Ryan]

Daum! Getting charged for an accident.
Gay shit cop is gay.

The cop was just doing his job. It's the DNR guys that seem to be making it a worst case scenario.
I don't understand why they couldn't have just asked us to leave.

[Heartview]

Tis why when I fire guns its on private property. But I have had plenty similar run ins with the cops where they act like that (even though it wasnt the actual cop in your case) and it always feels pretty shitty because there is nothing you can do.

[Sjoerd]

No bel-air at the end?

[666HiddenMaster666]

See if you can get the officer you talked to as a witness if they do anything?

[crex]

The cop was just doing his job. It's the DNR guys that seem to be making it a worst case scenario.
I don't understand why they couldn't have just asked us to leave.

Ikr. Maybe that dude was having a bad day?

[Ryan]

No bel-air at the end?

Not trolling.

[Troy]

I dont think you would be charged, not if you have proof of going there before, and other people going too. But then again, I have never been caught.

[crex]

That dude is just a prick. He can go screw him self

[Ryan]

I dont think you would be charged, not if you have proof of going there before, and other people going too. But then again, I have never been caught.

It was never trespassing before though. Just so happened we went on the week they decided to close it and not update anything on their website.

[Troy]

It was never trespassing before though. Just so happened we went on the week they decided to close it and not update anything on their website.

Yea, keep saying you didn't see a sign. And that not updating their website is a flaw they could have avoided easiley.

[Taylor Swift]

No bel-air at the end?

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[Ryan]

Yea, keep saying you didn't see a sign. And that not updating their website is a flaw they could have avoided easiley.

When we left, we looked for the sign and found it. That's the other thing, it was a piece of paper taped to a wooden post, covered in fine print. Not to mention half hidden by the trees by the road.

[Kirigaya Kazuto]

I read the whole shit
They making a big deal, to a 90's pc's lol