The tidy blue house in Hermon where Karen Wood lived and died is still bordered by the forest.

Her street, Treadwell Acres, is still quiet.

But in other ways, the mother who was shot accidentally 20 years ago by a hunter in her own backyard might not recognize her community today.

“Hermon’s developing very fast now,” said Rosanne Gray, an unofficial town historian. “It was much smaller then; a lot fewer people. There have been an awful lot of housing developments all over Hermon. Piles of them. The housing developments all over town are changing the town.”

After Wood died in what people here solemnly refer to as “the incident,” anxious residents kept children inside during hunting season and wrapped their dogs in hunter orange. But no one addressed the larger question of how hunting could exist safely in a fast-growing town of spread-out subdivisions.

Now, it seems as if time and progress might alter what town officials have not.

“I think that incident really awoke people to the hunting issues,” said lifelong Hermon resident Donna Pulver. “Karen Wood, she brought all the safety issues to light.”

As the town’s subdivisions continue to sprawl into the formerly rural landscape, the growth is changing the nature of the community.

Wood’s street, which winds between Hermon Pond and George Pond, was one of the first subdivisions to be built here and was sparsely settled in 1988. James Wentworth, a neighbor who heard the gunshot that killed Wood, remembers when another errant shot actually hit his house.

“I know it scared me awful. I’d never heard anything like that before,” Wentworth said. “A lot of people hunted here when we first moved in. I don’t think people really realize how far a high-powered bullet can travel.”

Now, north of Wood’s old house there are two 60- or 70-home subdivisions. Nearly 800 houses have been built in Hermon since 1989 and more than a dozen subdivisions have been constructed. The town’s population has jumped from 3,755 people in 1990 to an estimated 5,589 today.

The town has had to build new schools, and longtime residents are coming to terms with the changes that the influx of newcomers has brought.

Hermon residents remember that Wood, who was “from away,” had been wearing white mittens, like the white tail of a deer. And there’s a sense that if people move into a rural place, they should learn the rules.

Gray, the historian, said that she felt badly for the hunter and the Wood family.

“There’s a lot to be said about the incident … it was very sad,” Gray said. “The fact that that woman walked out away from her house with something white on her hands, what she did was a dangerous thing to do.”

In response to Hermon’s significant growth and change, Town Manager Clint Deschene said that Hermon’s comprehensive plan should be completed by 2010 and may include some kind of firearms ordinance.

“People hunt in Hermon,” said Deschene. “We’re very proud that Hermon’s the type of community that is still rural enough that some of these recreational activities can be enjoyed … But you’d be hard-pressed to legally find that you could shoot an animal in a subdivision.”

The town relies on state regulations that prevent hunters from firing without permission within 300 feet of a residential dwelling or farm building. Some towns in Maine have adopted ordinances that require hunters to be at least 500 feet away from residences, but Deschene said the council chose not to adopt special hunting ordinances a couple of years ago.

“They felt that this wasn’t the appropriate time, but that it might be appropriate for the future,” Deschene said.

Residents in other Maine towns have remembered what happened to Karen Wood as they considered implementing their own firearms ordinance.

“We are a fast-growing community, and I would hate to see someone new move into town, step out their back door and have something like that happen to them,” said Glenburn resident Ron Tewhey at a 2006 meeting on a possible firearms ordinance in the town.

“It is a reality that more and more housing developments are built here … but an arbitrary ordinance could be worse than no ordinance at all,” Deschene said.

Some people who live on Treadwell Acres now don’t agree.

Little Brady Theriault, 3, wore a hunter orange vest Wednesday while playing at his home – next door to where Wood lived. His grandparents Alfred and Eva Theriault live in East Millinocket and come to Hermon a lot to care for their grandson.

The Theriaults said they were very concerned about hunters shooting too close to the subdivision. They remembered when Karen Wood died, but were surprised to hear that their son had bought the house next door.

According to them, Treadwell Acres doesn’t feel safe during hunting season these days.

“I think it’s foolish to have hunting so close to the houses,” Alfred Theriault said. “I’m a hunter myself, and I’m surprised they haven’t made an ordinance.”

The Theriaults make sure their dogs wear hunter orange, even inside their pen, and Brady is not allowed to go off by himself into the woods.

But as dusk approached, the ebullient toddler had different ideas. He hopped onto his toy four-wheeler and took off on a joyride around the backyard. Then he steered toward his father’s shed into the woods.

“Brady!” his grandparents shouted, telling him to come back to the house, but he drove merrily forward into the woods.

There was a tense moment until the toddler turned his ATV around and came back to the backyard.

“I don’t think they should be shooting so close to the residential area – so close that you can hear the gunshots,” Eva Theriault said.

acurtis@bangordailynews.net

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