Neighbor Uses His Backyard for Target Practice — Then Rounds Start Zinging Into Nearby Properties

The homeowner said the problem started with a neighbor using his backyard for target practice. In some rural places, backyard shooting may not surprise anyone. But according to the Reddit post, this was not happening on a remote farm with a safe berm and empty land behind it.

This was happening in a Florida residential neighborhood.

The Reddit thread can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/1k3lg9z/neighbor_is_shooting_my_property/

The homeowner said the neighbor lived a couple hundred feet away and had begun shooting in his backyard. The issue was not simply the noise. The homeowner claimed the rounds were penetrating the target, crossing the street, ricocheting through the air, and striking trees on his property and neighboring properties.

He described loud zinging noises and said multiple people in the cul-de-sac had physically seen rounds ripping through tree branches. That kind of detail changes the story fast. A person may argue about whether backyard shooting is allowed in a given area, but rounds leaving the shooter’s property are a different matter entirely.

The homeowner said this had happened once about a year earlier. At that time, he confronted the neighbor, and the shooting stopped for a while. But when it started again, he said the same danger returned.

He called the sheriff’s office, and an officer came out to speak with him, his wife, and several neighbors. The officer then spoke with the shooter and left. The homeowner said the situation got worse shortly afterward. Within minutes of the officer leaving, he claimed the neighbor began shooting again, and this time the rounds were going into an area where his children played.

That was the part that made the post feel urgent. The homeowner was not asking whether he could complain about a loud neighbor. He was worried that an unsafe shooter was sending bullets across other people’s property in a residential area.

He also believed the neighbor had misled the responding officer about the size of his property. The homeowner looked up the property online and said the neighbor had less than one acre. He then pointed to Florida law and argued that the neighborhood density was far above the threshold where backyard shooting would be allowed.

But the bigger issue was not just lot size. The homeowner had recordings, security camera footage from a neighbor, and several eyewitnesses. What he did not have yet was the easiest kind of physical proof: a recovered bullet or obvious bullet mark. He said the property was forested, making it difficult to locate projectiles in trees or on the ground.

That left him in a frustrating position. He believed the danger was real and immediate, but he was still trying to give officials the kind of evidence they could act on quickly.

Commenters told him to keep calling every time the shooting happened and to get the other neighbors involved. Several said multiple independent complaints from different homes would carry more weight than one person repeatedly calling about the same neighbor.

Others suggested contacting Florida Fish and Wildlife or a game warden. Even though this was not a hunting issue, commenters believed wildlife officers or similar state authorities might have more experience with firearm discharge rules, rounds crossing roads, and unsafe shooting outdoors.

Some commenters focused on the evidence. They told him to keep the audio and video recordings, gather written statements from neighbors, document the dates and times, and keep trying to find physical proof like bullets, bullet fragments, or damaged trees.

A few people pointed out that the problem was not responsible target practice. Responsible shooters make sure every round stays on their property, hits a safe backstop, and cannot travel into roads, homes, or play areas. If rounds were crossing streets and hitting trees on other properties, commenters said the shooter had already lost the argument that this was safe.

The post ended with the homeowner trying to move the situation faster before someone got hurt. He had witnesses, recordings, and a neighborhood full of people hearing bullets zip through the air. The next step was making sure the evidence reached the right people before backyard target practice turned into a tragedy.