Wilderness Lost : Urban ‘Plinkers’ Turn Remote Canyon Into Shooting Range

Standing next to his mud-splattered pickup truck, Stan Zarkowski took aim with his Chinese-made MAC-90 and ripped off six quick rounds.

Small spits of dirt jumped around the target--a diamond-shaped “Divided Road” sign propped against a stream bed.

It was noon, and the 33-year-old maintenance worker from Thousand Oaks had been target shooting for hours. An open Coors Light rested on his tailgate near boxes of ammunition, a 9-millimeter Ruger pistol and a new Smith & Wesson .357-magnum revolver.

By his estimate, $70 worth of spent shell casings littered the ground nearby.

“You come up here and let your frustrations out,” said Zarkowski, clad in a sweat shirt, dusty jeans and tennis shoes. “It keeps you in line. It keeps you out of trouble.”

Of all the remote spots in Ventura County’s backcountry, Cherry Canyon has emerged as an unofficial, unregulated shooting range for urban “plinkers.” Because of its immense popularity, the canyon also has become one of the most abused stretches of wilderness in the Los Padres National Forest.

Broken glass sparkles on the hillsides. Bullet casings and shotgun shells carpet the ground. One of the larger piles of trash contains a toaster, a toilet rim, a Twinkie display stand, clock radio and dozens of beer cans.

At a clearing that was once an established campground, plinkers blasted a picnic table so often that U.S. Forest Service officials removed it last year.

“They come out here with a gun and their mind-set all the sudden changes to this Rambo-type attitude,” said George Garcia, a wildlife biologist with the Ojai Ranger District.

In recent years, the Forest Service has done little to discourage shooting at Cherry Canyon. Under a broad policy, guns are allowed throughout the national forest, except near campgrounds and other recreational areas.

“Everybody really turned a blind eye to it,” Garcia said. “The attitude was: It’s better to have it there than scattered throughout the whole district.”

But rangers are now taking a closer look at the canyon and figuring out ways to repair the environmental damage. Eventually, they may issue a plan to protect the canyon from further abuse.

Ranger Linda Riddle said the Forest Service could decide to ban shooting in the canyon, though that decision will probably not be made within the next year.

“There is that possibility,” she said. “But I just don’t know how it’s going to turn out in the end. I don’t have any preconceived ideas about it.”

Recognizing the controversy that would come with any decision to ban or restrict shooting, the Forest Service is taking a cautious, inclusive approach.

The first step, Riddle said, is to study the impacts of shooting and off-road vehicles in Cherry Canyon and in the larger watershed that feeds into Sespe Creek. Specific funding has not been set aside for such a study, but it has been cited as a priority project.

The second step involves determining whether target shooting can be done safely in three-mile-long Cherry Canyon. To get an answer, rangers will study shooting locations in other mountainous areas, consult with gun clubs and meet with other members of the public.

All of that will take time, Riddle said. Consequently, rangers are concentrating now on winning public cooperation to limit the damage to riparian and wildlife areas.

“If they don’t act responsibly, we have to act responsibly for them,” Garcia said.

While litter and abandoned, rusting appliances are the most visible sign of the canyon’s abuse, it is the dirt paths carved by motorcycles and four-wheel drive pickups that have prompted the Forest Service’s plans to close the canyon before the winter storms soften the terrain.

In past winters, the rain-swollen creek has proved a favorite spot for drivers of four-wheelers careening through the mud.

Their tracks have turned the entrance to Cherry Creek Road into a wide, barren bowl devoid of vegetation.

And along the bed of the seasonal creek, clumps of reddish buckwheat, great basin sage, wild rose and willow bushes lay trampled or uprooted, leaving bare patches of land.

The loss of vegetation, Garcia said, could lead to more soil runoff into the creek, choking the path of steelhead trout swimming upstream to spawn. “It could be interrupting the reproduction of the species,” he said.

This month, Forest Service officials are installing a gate at the California 33 turnoff that they hope will end winter traffic to Cherry Canyon and minimize the hillside erosion and silt buildup in Sespe Creek.

Rangers are also concerned about pollution from lead ammunition and toxic chemicals leaching into stream beds. Cans of paint, antifreeze and other chemicals are used as targets. Once plugged with holes, their contents seep into the ground.

In July, a Forest Service employee spotted a sheen on a hillside just inside the canyon’s entrance. A five-gallon bucket of motor oil was found riddled with bullet holes, triggering an $1,800 cleanup effort.

Half a mile down Cherry Creek Road, the canyon walls narrow next to a stand of big cone Douglas firs. From there, the road winds uphill, and the evidence of shooting is more scattered.

On a recent tour of the canyon, Garcia stopped his green Forest Service truck near a cluster of alder trees beside the creek for which the canyon is named.

“Look at that,” Garcia said, pointing to bark on an alder tree shredded by hundreds of shotgun pellets and larger lead slugs. “When the bark starts falling off, the trees are more susceptible to insects and disease.”

“It’s going to live for a while, but it’s eventually going to die off.”

It has only been in the past decade that Cherry Canyon emerged as the county’s proving ground for would-be sharpshooters.

Until 1984, shooting was permitted at the entrance to the Rose Valley Recreation Area, 10 miles south of Cherry Canyon. Cars would park along the paved road, with shooters blasting away at bottles and other targets. The legacy of that era is “Sparkle Mountain,” a low hillside embedded with so much glass that it reflects sunlight like a mirror.

Once that area was closed to guns, shooters moved several miles up Maricopa Highway to a wide, grassy clearing. The spot remained popular for several years until plinkers began taking aim at a large California Department of Transportation storage shed to one side of the clearing.

At the request of Caltrans, the Forest Service banned shooting there, pushing the activity farther up the highway until it reached the mouth of Cherry Canyon.

And while the canyon is clearly the hub of target shooting, rangers occasionally find trash and other evidence of activity in smaller, nearby canyons.

Forest Service personnel fear that if they try to restrict gun activity in one area, such as Cherry Canyon, target shooters will simply move up the highway or spread to neighboring canyons.

There is one controlled range in Ventura County’s backcountry. A few miles inside Rose Valley, the Ojai Valley Gun Club features a series of targets at measured distances, regular tournaments and classes on shooting safety. Each dues-paying member is provided with a key to the locked gate, and the club is open to the public for contests and once a month target practice.

“We’re shooting enthusiasts and we try to make it as safe as possible,” club president Jim Pendleton said.

But many of those who flock to Cherry Canyon bristle at the thought of paying money to shoot outdoors. And they say they prefer the freedom of Cherry Canyon, where there in no one to tell them what kind of weapons they can fire.

Aware that the Forest Service considers Cherry Canyon a problem, the shooters said they fear that guns will someday be banned in the area. Many expressed frustration with the trash and said they do their part to keep it clean. Some have participated with other volunteers in organized cleanup days.

“Whatever we bring, we take back,” said John Schlossman, 26, of Newbury Park, who works for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Still, he acknowledged it can be a losing battle.

“This stuff just keeps getting bullet-riddled and before you know, there’s too much to pick up,” he said.

On a recent weekend, despite a chilling wind, about two dozen people had staked out spots along the road that bisects the canyon. Few people described themselves as hunters. Instead, they said they were there for target practice and and to sharpen their skills for self-protection.

They fired an array of weapons ranging from small, palm-sized pistols to sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns and Russian AK-47s. Others, who considered themselves collectors, had brought World War II-era guns and replicas of older weapons.

“It’s a hobby,” said Richard Brandt, 29, a communications engineer from Thousand Oaks, who was firing a replica of a rifle from the 1880s. “You like to come up here and see if you can hit stuff.”

For some, outings to Cherry Canyon are family affairs.

While the shooting is done almost exclusively by men, often they are accompanied by wives and children.

After making a trip to the top of the canyon to see a dusting of snow, Todd Raymond and several friends stopped to test their skills at skeet shooting.

Raymond blasted away with a .12-gauge shotgun, as his 4-year-old daughter, Ashley, and 6-year-old son, James, watched nearby.

“Daddy, can I shoot? Can I shoot?” Ashley pleaded.

“No, honey, this one is too big for you,” Raymond replied.

A short distance away, another father and his son were firing two homemade canons filled with black gunpowder. The booms echoed off the sandstone below Pine Mountain ridge.

Rick Azevedo, 46, said his son Brian had asked to go to Cherry Canyon for his birthday rather than hosting a party for his friends. The two had made the canons together during the past year.

Azevedo then taught his son to load the canon with black powder, tamp it with a rod, insert a metal ball, light the fuse and quickly back away.

“I’m a single dad and I enjoy every minute of it,” Azevedo said. “This is just kind of a thing we do.”