A jungle out there.

Byline: Andrea Damewood The Register-Guard

Part of Abe Kossol's lawn-mowing routine includes pulling out arrowheads embedded in the grass. They have been left by men who come each week to smoke cigarettes, drink beer and shoot deer - not more than 150 yards from his front door.

Kossol's 3-acre parcel off Blanton Road one mile south of Eugene's city limits has become a small oasis for wildlife, he said.

In the past two years, animals have come in droves - deer, turkey and even cougar. And along with them have come the hunters.

"This is like poach city," Kossol, 58, said. "I don't mind people going hunting, but this other thing a lot of times they just want to kill (the deer)."

As homes creep into once-wooded areas, acts that formerly occurred in remote forests are happening close to front porches, wildlife enforcement officials say.

While most urban poachers use stealthy bows and arrows, some use high-powered rifles - with a range of a mile or more - in close proximity to homes.

Each year Eugene police receive 10 to 15 calls from south hills residents complaining of gunshots in the night, presumably from poachers stalking their prey within city limits, Sgt. Rex Barrong said.

"If they're in a residential area, shooting rifles and handguns, obviously there's a safety issue," he said.

Neighbors off North Terry Street in the Bethel area know that fear too well.

Poachers have taken to hunting deer that descend on the 60 acres of wooded property behind Flakeboard Eugene on North Danebo Street.

Slashing through chain link fences and ignoring no trespassing signs, they shine lights and fire away at their quarry, mill manager Sean Coffee said.

Dozens of homes line the forested lot.

"If we get shot (at), we're very concerned," said John Bohann, who lives across North Terry Street from the woods.

A few years ago, a bullet hit the front door of a woman who lives adjacent to the property.

"I'm extremely concerned," said the woman, who declined to give her name, citing fear of the poachers. "I had a bullet hit my house. How scared would you be?"

As recently as last month, mill employees heard shots and called police. No suspects were found.

At least once a year, workers patrolling the woods come across a carcass, Coffee said. The last one, a bow kill, still had its head.

Coffee said the mill works with its neighbors to call police when they spot trespassers, but "unfortunately it's very, very difficult to catch the people doing it."

Even proving the shots were fired by poachers is tough, said Barrong, the Eugene police sergeant.

Officers have never caught a poacher inside city limits, he said.

"If you do happen to hit a deer, you throw 'em in the back of a pickup or the trunk of a car and they're gone," Barrong said.

State police have arrested poachers in cities and residential areas outside city limits, said Sgt. Tom Hulett, who supervises the state police's game law officers in the southern Willamette Valley.

A juvenile was arrested last October in Springfield after he shot a deer standing in the street near the South 70th Street area, he said.

A larger poaching circle was broken in January, when three men were arrested for firing their weapons in range of homes outside Crow.

Hunting without a license is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to $6,250 in fines and a year in jail. Violators also may face reckless endangerment charges and, if caught within city limits, a charge of unlawful use of a weapon, a felony.

Outside the urban growth boundary, it's not illegal to fire a gun, Hulett said.

"In rural areas near houses, you can hunt lawfully on a half acre; the only real law that applies is recklessly endangering," he said. "It can certainly be annoying and seemingly senseless, but you can't legislate common sense."

That leaves Kossol, who has lived just outside the city limits and the urban growth boundary since 1984, without much recourse to go after those who poach on his property.

Though he used to call the sheriff's office, the understaffed patrols often are unable to come in time, if at all, he said.

Kossol said he lives with his wife and three indoor cats, and doesn't have grandchildren to worry about yet, so he will cope and continue to sprinkle bread each afternoon for his fauna friends.

"We don't report it anymore," he said. "I don't focus so much on the poachers. I'm more concerned that these animals don't have any place to go."