Dear Abby

I'm seeking advice on how to deal with an armed, potentially drug-addled neighbor.

Background: the neighbor (and his pack of dogs) hunts feral pigs. He uses a rifle for this purpose, and isn't afraid to discharge it at dawn in an area where people, cattle, horses, and other domestic animals are well within range of a rifle.

I know he isn't afraid to do these things, because he did all of them this morning ON OUR PROPERTY.

Additional background: another neighbor, with whom we have a cordial relationship, has shared that hunter-neighbor used to be a capable tradesman, doing drywall, carpentry, and handiwork for a living. That was before the (unspecified) drugs, though, and before the local police allegedly had to come to his home and confiscate his firearms a couple years ago.

Rational, urban me says to contact the police, file whatever kind of complaint one files in situations like these, and let them handle it.

Recently no-longer-urban me believes:

1. The cops aren't likely to prioritize this situation since we live in a rural area where people do this sort of thing all the time and have done so for generations

2. Even if the cops take some kind of action, its effect would likely be temporary since guns are easy to come by and have more rights than people

3. Hunter-neighbor would likely deduce we were the source of any police intervention, since he saw me watching him traipse across our property

Full disclosure:

My knee-jerk reaction this morning was, "We need a gun."

Fuller disclosure:

1. I hate guns

2. In an armed confrontation I would 100% be the guy who hesitates and ends up on the ground bleeding out

3. Even writing "We need a gun" and "armed confrontation" gives me a rhetorical brain bleed

4. We're not getting a gun

Pacifist me thinks I need to have a conversation with hunter-neighbor and in a calm, neighborly way let him know we don't want him hunting on our property.

Rational me thinks a rational person wouldn't be out at dawn on other people's property under any circumstances, let alone firing a rifle. Rational me thinks that kind of behavior is irrational.

Therefore, rational me knows I would be incapable of having a calm, neighborly conversation with anyone who behaves in the erratic, antisocial manner described above.

SO, dear Abby, what do you think of all this? Is there any advice that accounts for all these variables and achieves a positive outcome in today's world? Or do we just have to put up with an irrational gunman occasionally wandering our property, putting us at risk of sudden morbidity and mortality?

Signed—