ELIOT – Lois and Jim Crawford have been fighting an outdoor shooting range ever since the sound of shots interrupted their backyard barbecue one Mother’s Day.

“My granddaughter, who was 6 at the time, ran into the house shrieking,” Lois Crawford said as she recalled the day in 1999. “She was terrified.”

Lois Crawford is circulating a petition calling on the town’s Board of Selectmen to clamp down on noise from the range, which is 700 feet from their home.

But there may be little that the Crawfords or the town can do because state law exempts shooting ranges from local noise-control ordinances.

Other disputes involving shooting ranges have sprouted as southern Maine becomes more densely populated.

Cape Elizabeth residents who attempted a petition effort two years ago were unable to persuade town officials to place limits on the operating hours of the Spurwink Rod and Gun Club.

The Merrymeeting Sportsmen’s Association Inc. in Topsham closed its outdoor range in 1999 after nearly 50 years of operation because too many houses were being built nearby. The Legislature had just passed a law that made it illegal to fire a gun within 300 feet of a home. The club still is looking for a new location.

“I think we need to realize that times are changing,” said state Sen. Kenneth Lemont, R-Kittery, who is helping to mediate the Eliot dispute.

“There is prime real estate around some of these ranges, and people want to live in these areas.”

Commercial and residential growth in the 1980s led to hunting and firearm restrictions as the face of once-rural communities changed.

The shooting range near the Crawfords’ home opened in the late 1940s when Eliot, on the state’s southernmost tip, was still a rural community. There were no houses near the area then, but now there are 50.

“It’s no place for a shooting range,” said Lois Crawford, who said she didn’t know about the range when she and her husband moved from Massachusetts.

Five years ago, residents complaining of the noise tried to shut down the range. In response, the club agreed to cut back on operating hours.

Neighbors now want the club to consider replacing the outdoor range with an indoor one. They say they’re willing to help raise money for the project.

Lemont and George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, are working with the club to address the neighbors’ concerns. One solution may be further reducing the range’s hours. Another may be using a grant from the National Rifle Association to build walls to cut down the noise.

“All they want to do is close us down,” said Bill Rollins, vice president of the Associated Sportsmen’s Club of York County, which helped establish the range. “They tried the same thing five years ago, and they didn’t succeed then. The law says we can be there.”

Smith said the clubs and their neighbors could try to find a way to compromise.

“I stress to the clubs that it’s still important to be diplomatic and cooperative and to accommodate neighbors’ concerns when possible,” he said.

Smith said even though the noise ordinance law gives ranges some protection, it doesn’t help to have bad relations with neighbors.

If they wanted to, communities simply could adopt new zoning rules to try to outlaw these ranges, he said.