  |
|
On this page:
|
|
4) a. Circulation of the Safe Space Petition In Wisconsin, Virginia Ray, has agreed to maintain and update the list of organizations circulating the petition. There is a comments page here where you may communicate with Virginia. Please contact using the web based form below if you live in Wisconsin and will agree to circulate the Safe Space Petition. Every person who circulates a petition will have to certify the signatures by signing the statement below. This statement should be placed at the bottom of every petition but does not have to be completed until the County Organizer mails it to the State coordinator. The undersigned and notarized Name and contact information is that of the person who circulated the petition above and who hereby certifies that s/he knows the people who signed; or has seen ID from those unknown; or verified the signatures by use of their telephone or e-mail address. Name_____________________________________________________ Address___________________________________________________ Phone and E-Mail ___________________________________________ Notary ____________________________________________________ 10 States for Safe Space Campaign You can agree to become the State Coordinator. The State Coordinator is responsible for eventually finding one person in every county, to be the county petition coordinator, but you can take a year to do it. This is a low keyed campaign where people will do a little and talk a lot until the concept of Safe Space is understood by many people and many have downloaded the Safe Space Poster and put it on their front door or in their front hallway. The state coordinator keeps the e-mailed complaints of hunter harassment, and investigates them to insure the truthfulness of the complaint. The state coordinator assists the victim to document the problem, keep records and expose the problem. Eventually, the state coordinator presents all the petition signatures to state legislators. In fact, everyone circulating the petition will be invited to attend a day with our state legislators when enough signatures are gathered. If you have or want a website, GetSirius can be hired to put the proposed Safe Space legislation and petition form and the Safe Space banners on your site. |
|
One of the organizing tactics of the safe space campaign is to encourage victims to write their stories in e-mails and for local groups to publish these stories on-line. There will be bursts of interest from the media before the local deer hunting seasons. In every interview the press person will strive to include the addresses of all the Safe Space website where people have published their stories, or can get information and support if they are threatened with the Hunter Harassment Law and where they can sign the petition.
|
|
4)c. Lack of Police Protection for Non-Hunters Document related stories of lack of police protection for non-hunters. IF YOU HAVE BEEN SUFFERING HARASSMENT SUCH AS EXPERIENCED BY THE PEOPLE BELOW, PLEASE WRITE YOUR STORY IN THE BOX BELOW AND SEND IT TO US.
|
|
4) d. Victim's
Stories Victims Stories:
In short, there was a person hunting close enough to our house, that it could be seen, in my family there are 4 dogs and 5 children. We live at the end of a dead end road on 15 acres, and we have had hunters walk thru the river bottom between our house and the river, less than 500 feet, and claim that they are on public land, ( the land is posted) Anyway, this person kept coming down the road, hunting close to our residence, actually came into our yard one night, threatened my husband and son stating they were harassing him. He was hunting not more than one hundred feet off of a state trail, which also boarders our property line. This continued with different things happening untill one day this person started harassing myself and 2 minor children, on the road to our house, tried to run us off the road, calling names, by the end of this, he then assulted my husband, all witnessed by me. My husband filed a restraining order, but the offender the filed a 5th degree assult charge, and a harassment charge. Its to the point where Im afraid to walk in the woods or on the dirt road with my dogs or my childre. The police were no help what soever and neither were the DNR officials, who this was also reported to. So now what, I'm beginning to think there are no rights any longer, and people can just walk on you. HUNTER PLEADS INNOCENT IN SHOOTING DEATH Chippewa Falls (Chippewa County Circuit Court) A man charged with shooting a woman last year pleaded innocent. Michael E. Berseth, 44, is charged with felony second degree reckless homicide in the death of Deborah A Prasnicki. Prasnicki was walking her dogs near the woods where Berseth was hunting. A criminal complaint said Berseth of Chippewa Falls was hunting with two other men during a special muzzle loader season Dec 1. Berseth shot a white object, which turned out to be a white scarf that Prasnicki was wearing. Berseth told investigators he thought the white object was moving faster than a person could walk. He is free on $25,000.00 signature bond. A trial date has not been set. The charge carries a maximum of 15 years prison. In Wisconsin they allow hunting in the state parks. In Janesville, they were hunting geese in the city parks. There is never a time when it isn't hunting season for something. I lived in Dodgeville, where people who owned a dog kennel had to move because the police would not protect them from hunters shooting in a field adjacent to their kennel. They knew one of the dogs would be shot some day. I took in a feral who had kittens in my house. I was victimized by hunter killers who used the lovely, trusting kittens for target practice, hitting one in the spine and another in the neck -- eventually all of my cats had bullets in them. Sparky, hit in the spine, died in agony. The "neighbors" were convicted but the judge and cops were sympathetic to them. I was then prosecuted for "allowing my cats to go in their yard". I had been forbidden to cross the property line to get my cats when they ran there. Then the killers baited traps to lure them into their yard. I received a sentence 10 times harsher than the killers received. I had to sell my home and move to another city as the Judge threatened to "impound" (read kill) the cats if they went in the killer's yard again. He said he would "impound" them based on nothing but the word of the killers, who lied constantly and even tried to run me over on the street in front of my house. They were excused for everything and assisted by the police. I believe this happens because of the hunting culture and the hunting brotherhood. It is entirely out of hand and normal people better wake up. There is a brotherhood of child molesters, animal abusers, and "hunter" killers out there and they protect and cover up for one another. They have passed law after law to protect their strange idea of recreation and male bonding. They are powerful and we better get organized to assert our right to freedom from terror. You think you are safe? I thought I was safe too. You are not! We live in the rural area of Texas and year after year the problem with hunters is increasing. We do not lease our land for hunting. Our closest neighbor has become lazy and decided to live off deer hunters. Friday afternoon the hunters began to shoot at our house and we called the law. They were shooting deer on a wheat field beside our house and land, it looked like a slaughter house. Last week they wounded a deer and it came through our back yard. Law enforcement and game wardens have fined them for spotlighting (hunting deer at night). We need to paint COW, HORSE, and BULL on our livestock. Neither fences or gates mean anything to these hunters. They drive by our home, rifle in one hand, beer in another hand and throw out beer cans. The hunters have tied deer blinds to boundary fences and some of them are turned towards another neighbor's land----he doesn't lease his land either. Then we discovered that they have a M14 assault weapon and are using the clip, repeated 75 times. Sounds like a war zone. We are afraid they will get us for hunter harassment if we say anything to them . There are no laws or regulations about shooting toward highways, marked roads, or dwellings in our county. What do we need to do in order to get some regulations to protect us? Our county has many of the large ranches in it, they seem to bring in more and more hunters each year. Next to these large ranches are many small farms/rural homes. Got a call from one of the small farmers this morning. He has a job in the day and tries to do some of his farming in the afternoons and on weekends. Well, here's the problem---hunters across the fence told him they would file harassment charges because the tractor he was plowing with was making to much noise. Guess he can go back to the old days of horse and plow. Also, he has small children and is concerned with the fact that these hunters can carry any weapon into this county without any check. At this time the only game warden we have is taking care of SEVERAL COUNTIES. We need our own game warden. We are also a county of many dirt roads, and these guys are costing the county taxpayers (me) major bucks. Hunters always have large 4-wheel drive trucks---these either leave deep, deep, ruts in the mud or get stuck; and then the county road graders have to try to fix the roads. I hope we have a few rights left. We were here on this farm exactly six months and after the sixth month, they set-up this hunting club 130 yards from our front door. We believe the timber companies; Willamette, as of this year being bought out by Weyerhaeuser and the smaller timber companies started these hunting club leases for financial reasons. The hunting clubs are known as garbage dumps because hunters dump lead shot which contaminates the water supply. Anyway, they are ultimately owned by Georgia-Pacific, based in Georgia, a conglomerate of monopolized billions destroying the environment with paper mills polluting the air and water with Dioxin vapors. The paint peels off of the vehicles and homes immediately surrounding these paper mills. Who knows what this does to the peoples' lungs in Monroe, Louisiana? And the odor of the paper mill in Monroe, almost turns a person's stomach. The dollars received from hunters that frequent this State do not support education, highways, nor victims of gun violence. The money is used to breed more wildlife to supply hunters more wildlife to slaughter. Since the hunting club moved in next door: hunters have driven by shooting at our home (it has happened so many times we call them drive-bys); shot over our heads while we worked on our farm; ricocheted bullets off our trees; cut private posted property wire fences; built deer stands on private posted property; damaged our vehicles by shooting at them; dumped deer torsos in neighboring ditches; dumped heads of does in the parking lot of Wendy's drive-in restaurants (two heads were found during hunting "season" in Monroe, Louisiana); stopped in front of our home urinating (last time at 7:25 p.m. 11/5/02 in front of our home); and shot assault weapons day & night. We have called the police a hundred times, reporting drunks firing at the house, dumping animal parts, urinating and shooting at our car. No one has ever been investigated much less prosecuted for their malicious, malevolent criminal behavior. There has been no attempt to find them through the license numbers we have provided. In fact, we recently checked and found that of all the times we complained, only a few police reports were filed. On those reports the police had the wrong color of the truck and wrong license number. I do not believe this was accidental. I believe they are protecting their hunting brothers. Yet, Louisiana has a law against "Harassing Hunters" sec.648.1. What about the harassment and threats by hunters; what about the stupid gun blasts echoing through your home at close range when people are attempting to live in peace? Yes, this is the "real" Louisiana, where hunters are free to target animals and people. INDIANA As a property landowner with 250 ft of lake front, the IDNR told me if I do anything on my property that disturbs duck hunters or any hunter I can be arrested and subject to property confiscation, is...fire a gun, mow my grass or anything they (the hunters) think is scaring off wildlife. The officer also told me it would be best if I stayed out of my front yard until the hunters left around 10am (for the entire hunting season), the hunters told him that's when they'd be done each day. What are my rights as a landowner? I am not making this up! Below is a Headline from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 3, 2002, page 7B. DNR PLEASED AS GUN-DEER SEASON RANKS AS 5th SAFEST 2 HUNTERS SHOT TO DEATH ONE SUFFERED HEAD INJURIES IN A FALL Three hunters died during the gun-deer season that ended Sunday-one of the safest seasons in Wisconsin. ....There were 17 accidental shootings that injured hunters. A 13 year old girl who shot herself in the foot and a 14 year old boy shot himself in the buttocks. 10 hunters were struck by bullets fired by their hunting partners. A 14 year old boy shot a man when a deer jumped between them; a 13 year old boy shot his father in the back; a 30 year old man shot "something brown" which turned out to be a man wearing brown pants; 3 hunters shot at one deer, and hit a 61 year old man in the head. Another man died when he fell out of his tree stand but since the DNR only counts shootings, that man's death was not included in the hunting deaths tally. A total of 618,000 people purchased licenses, 10% fewer than 2001. Last year 5 died but one was a homicide and one was a suicide, according to "authorities". Rex Stuart found the below hunting statistics collected by the Bear Interest Group. http//www.bear-interest-group.bigstep.com According to the International Hunter Education Association (IHEA), hunters shot 1038 to 1780 people per year in the US and Canada during 1987 to 1997. The IHEA listed the situations for 822 of the shootings in 1997 as follows
We live in a very rural and isolated area, and are terrorized every year by the damn hunters. I have been shot at, and threatened while walking my dogs. We've watched them dump their dogs in our driveway, we have photographed them shooting within about 30 feet of the road and across the road as we drove by. They routinely trespass, build fires and leave mounds of trash. I swear, every damn hunter in the world drinks Budweiser. The sheriff has told us we have a greater chance of being the victim of a drive-by shooting out here than if we lived in the middle of town. They have also told us they hate hunters because the opening of the season means a flood of complaint calls and they're almost helpless to do anything to stop it. Starting with the weekend of the September 1st, we avoid our windows and keep our drapes closed for fear of getting shot as we stand in our own living room. The fact is, if this were to happen in the city, it would called exactly what it is armed thugs vandalizing a neighborhood. One of the worst things we've seen was a man with a young girl, maybe 10-12 years old - evidently his daughter. They were standing out on the road next to a pickup truck. He was behind her with his arms around her front, forcing her to hold a dead bird. The front of her shirt was bloody. His hands were around hers and he was making her pull the feathers out of the bird. The little girl was just sobbing and begging "Please daddy, no..." We slowed to look at this spectacle and he screamed "What the fuck are YOU looking at?" We've also watched them shoot doves and quail and leave the bodies lay. This past year, I watched as a "man" just mindlessly blasted at doves as he walked along and then kicked at their still flopping bodies. We have also had one of our dogs poisoned. We can't prove that hunters did it though. I would be happy to give you all photos that I have. They aren't much but they DO show the brave hunt 'n' grunt types shooting from very close to the road. As someone else here said, we're not safe in our own homes and its time for the the silent 95% of us to be heard. To: Non-Hunters Right to Space, The comments at the top of the page show the disregard many hunters and gun lovers have for their fellow man's safety, peace and tranquility or anything else. I live in Kentucky and my neighbors and I have a serious problem. There is a man who has a few acres surrounded by our homes. He has set up a firing range, and also hunts deer and squirrell on these few acres. Out of season, he amuses himself by firing an AK 47 and an M 16 on his firing range.(I was in vietnam so I know the sounds well). Our county has no laws or regulations of any kind, and after a bullet hit a tree in my yard, I called the state police. An arrogant state police trooper showed up and angrily told me that the man could fire his gun anywhere, anytime he wanted, and people like me who were against guns had no right to harass "this avid hunter and sportsman." When I suggested that the noise was disturbing the neighborhood, the police officer said I was a crank, and when I said the man was threatening my life by firing bullets into my yard, the police officer said "you can't prove it." The County Attorney is politically afraid to do anything about it. He has to run for office. We cannot let our grandchildren play in our yard because of this man. All of the neighbors have agreed to sign a petition, but we are unsure of exactly how to word it, and we cannot afford an attorney, and besides, we cannot find an attorney who will take on gun owners because they say it is political suicide to even suggest any kind of regulation against guns in this county--or for that matter--in Kentucky. Can you help us with a petition? Thank you, Dale If you wish to relate your story to
us, |
 Return
to top of page
|
