Hunting with Guns to be Prohibited at Former Ponderlodge

VILLLAS – Nearby residents and visitors to the former Ponderlodge property have reported hearing gunshots on the property.
Lower Township Council and the state Division of Fish and Wildlife are in agreement to prohibit hunting with shotguns in the Cox Hall Creek Wildlife Management Area, in the footprint of the former Ponderlodge property.
At a Monday Nov. 7 meeting, Mayor Michael Beck said he received a call from a resident on Shawmount Avenue, the entrance road to the park, who saw a man in camouflage carrying a bow and arrow entering the property.
On his daily walk the following morning at Cox Hall Creek Management Area, Beck said he saw a scene like the movie “It Came From Beneath the Sea.”
“Everybody was running to their cars, getting in and driving out of there,” he said.
A township employee who was walking on the property told Beck she heard shooting. Beck said he heard about six gunshots. Lower Township police were called to the property.
“Certainly I’m not against hunting but I am against hunting inside Ponderlodge,” said the mayor.
He said there is not enough space from houses that surround the property to allow hunting with guns. Beck said he wasn’t sure if the gunshots were coming from the park or a nearby meadow.
“We can’t take that chance,” he said.
Signs are being posted from the Division of Fish and Wildlife prohibiting hunting with guns.The possibility exists that bow and arrow hunting would be allowed at certain times of the year to keep the deer population under control. Council agreed bow and arrow hunting may be permissible, perhaps closing the property for a few days each year.
Deputy Mayor Kevin Lare suggested the sound of gunshots may have come from duck hunters. He said it was not deer hunting season.
Lare agreed bow hunting may be permissible with clear boundaries.
Council approved Beck sending a letter to the Division of Fish and Wildlife agreeing hunting with guns on the property should be prohibited.
Shawmount Avenue Resident Thomas Ross said he had lived next to the property for 25 years and he was hearing “a lot more shots.” He said he walked all the trails and all of them were too close to homes or Bayshore Road to allow hunting with shotguns.
Resident Jacqueline Dougherty, also a Shawmount Avenue resident, told council she heard gunshots and found a gutted deer in her backyard.