Junk Hunt : Groups to Clean Up Targets Left in Canyon by Shooters

Deep in the backcountry of the Los Padres National Forest, the bullet-ridden carcasses of household appliances, children’s toys and auto parts lie abandoned to the elements.

The discarded refuse is a favorite target of “the bangers,” gun enthusiasts who cart junk into the Cherry Creek Canyon recreational shooting area for the sole purpose of riddling it with bullets.

Their failure to cart it back out is now threatening to cause the permanent closure of the only free-range shooting area in Ventura County.

“Shooters do it as a sport, but the bangers just want to feel the power in their fingertips and don’t stop shooting until they’re knee-deep in brass” shell casings, said Cliff Cox, who occasionally target shoots at the Cherry Creek range and also manages Ventura’s Grant Park Pistol Range.

“I think they’re mindless,” said Ron Hoelting, a 43-year-old Camarillo landscape contractor who was shooting clay disks Wednesday after the close of quail season. “Who would want to assassinate a television set?”

Saturday, a group of environment-minded shooters will try to clean up the three-acre site, littered with bulk trash and thousands of spent shells, to prevent the U.S. Forest Service from closing the area 26 miles north of Ojai on California 33.

The bangers undoubtedly will not be among the volunteers, Ron Bassett, the park’s Ojai district ranger, said.

“The person who throws a MacDonald’s cup out their window is the same person who brings a refrigerator up here and unloads on it with their semiautomatic,” Bassett said. “They won’t be here for the cleanup.”

As many as 200 people from Ventura and surrounding counties use the shooting area on a busy weekend. Bassett said those who frequent the area weekdays are usually more responsible shooters, such as Mike Kaminski, 58, a retired engineer from Camarillo who scavenges “once fired brass” to reload at home with his grandsons.

“I’ve got shopping bags full,” said Kaminski, who was shooting at paper targets with a Winchester earlier this week. “There’s more than I can use in my lifetime, and more than my grandkid’s children could use in theirs.”

The area’s charm to shooters is its lack of supervision and regulation. The alternatives in the county are an indoor range in Oxnard, the Ventura city range, which permits only pistols and .22-caliber rifles, and the Ojai Gun Club, some of whose members frequent Cherry Canyon when they want to fire at will.

“A lot of people don’t take to an organized range and shooting at regulated distances,” said Cliff E. Baker, 53, a civilian industrial safety officer at the Point Mugu Pacific Missile Test Center, who shot competitively during his 21 years in the U.S. Navy.

“I’ve never had a deer stop at 25 yards and stand broadside waiting for the range-master to holler ‘All clear!’ ”

But the lack of supervision is also the reason for the Wild West atmosphere and the trash buildup along the scenic highway that winds through the mountains above Ojai.

“It gets crazy up here on the weekends,” Hoelting said. “There are so many odd people and an atmosphere of disorder. It’s kind of a dead zone, and hunters won’t come near it.”

At various times, the area has been littered with household water heaters, truck parts, motorcycle engine heads, brake drums and car doors complete with windows, Baker, a cleanup volunteer, said.

Others have found televisions, radios and stuffed animals. Wednesday, the bullet-riddled refuse included a street sign, a basketball, a rotting pumpkin, a child’s Big Wheel tricycle and once-full paint cans that had splattered the ground in bright oranges and greens as they were ripped apart by gunshots.

“I’ve seen where someone’s obviously cleaned out a toy box,” said Bassett, who also shoots at the area. “Right after Halloween, we get pumpkins all over the place. It looks like hell, but they’re biodegradable.”

Larry Cardoza, who is organizing Saturday’s cleanup, said he recently put up a handmade wooden sign advising patrons not to litter, only to return a week later to find it shot to pieces.

Bassett said he has not bothered to place a dumpster at the entrance to the shooting area because it would get shot up, as did a Caltrans sand shed at another shooting area five miles closer to Ojai.

The Forest Service closed that area two years ago because of a trash buildup and the assaults on the shed. It closed the even more accessible Rose Valley shooting area--14 miles north of Ojai--in 1985 because of growing mounds of shot-up glass bottles.

The shards still litter the area, now referred to as “Sparkle Mountain.”

“Glass is a real big problem at Cherry Creek too,” said Cardoza, 39, a grade-school teacher from Ventura. “It’s horrible to walk over because it goes through the soles of your shoes, and it focuses the rays of the sun on vegetation underneath and could conceivably cause a forest fire.”

Cardoza, who has organized several cleanups in the past two years at the Cherry Creek site, understands the bangers’ urge to hear bullets ricochet off metal or a paint can explode. He often shoots at one-quart, plastic oil bottles filled with water and at paper targets.

“When I go out to shoot and fire away at a target for an hour, the world disappears and all my problems are gone,” said Cardoza, who collects antique military rifles from various countries. “I’m not thinking about anything but the black circle on the target, just like a meditator who sits in a yoga position repeating ‘Ommmmmm.’ ”

The Forest Service is tolerant of the bangers because there have never been any shooting accidents in the area, Bassett said. He said he plans to create a garbage area, enclosed by open-weave cyclone fencing that can’t be shot up, after Saturday’s cleanup campaign.

“I’m willing to keep the area open, but we’ve got to manage it,” said Bassett, adding that enforcement is difficult. “Citing them for litter is like citing kids for writing graffiti on rocks. You have to catch them at it, and it’s hard to tell how long things have been out here.”

Baker said the bangers must realize that they will force the closing of the firing area if they don’t stop using it as a dump.

“Anything that’s not injurious or doesn’t leave a toxic residue, if they want to bring it in, fine,” Baker said. “But along with the right to do that comes the obligation to carry it out and dispose of it in an intelligent manner.”