‘Held hostage.’ Lake Tobesofkee man voices fears about hunters shooting near homes
A deer hunter who leases hunting land near the eastern shores of Lake Tobesofkee obtained a temporary protective order on Friday against the president of a lake homeowners’ association who he says has been harassing him and fellow hunters in recent months.
As details of residents’ concerns emerged about potential stray bullets hitting people or houses, the homeowners’ president, James Majewski, was told at a hearing in Bibb County Superior Court that, despite the proximity to homes, hunting there is legal and that Majewski must steer clear of the hunting grounds.
The dispute centers on a broader issue that Bibb County commissioners are expected to address in the coming year: Where, exactly, will hunting and shooting be allowed in and around Macon as areas that were once countryside become more populated?
Limitations on shooting guns were in place under Macon’s former government, but when the city and county consolidated more than five years ago those ordinances slipped through the cracks, Commissioner Joe Allen testified at Friday’s hearing.
For now at least, state law has precedence and the tract of land the hunters use near Lake Tobesofkee affords them the requisite 50-yards distance from public roads to fire guns or shoot deer.
The area in question at Friday’s hearing sits off Pineworth Road, which runs south of Moseley Dixon Road between the lake and Heath Road, a mile or so northwest of Westside High School.
The hunter who sought the protective order, John Mathis, testified before Judge Verda M. Colvin that he first encountered Majewski at the hunting land in October.
Mathis said that Majewski, who lives nearby in a lakefront house on Pinnacle Pointe Drive, would repeatedly show up on or near the hunting ground on a golf cart, honking a horn and hollering while hunters were in the woods.
Mathis said he reported Majewski, 78, a retired electrical engineer, to the sheriff’s department four or five times but that Majewski continued going onto the hunting property. Mathis said he also called a game warden, who assured Mathis that hunting was allowed there.
Mathis testified Friday that he sought a protective order against Majewski because “I finally just had enough.”
Majewski told the judge Friday that he knew the hunters “have every legal right to do what they’re doing,” but that he worries about his neighbors’ safety.
Colvin, whose role in the matter was solely to determine whether a protective order should be granted, later referred to the broader safety issue, saying, “I recognize that sometimes the law and what we as laypeople think is appropriate sometimes don’t jibe.”
Majewski told the judge that he and his neighbors feel they are “just being held hostage. We hear gunshots in the morning, gunshots in the evening.”
Commissioner Allen testified as a witness for Majewski, saying that county officials are working on measures that would limit firing guns near residences.
Majewski, toward the end of the hearing, said he would stop bothering the hunters during the deer season, which ends in January.
Colvin later told the two men, “I hope some day you all can ... move past this.”