A bullet damages my neighbor's house on Dec 21st, 2013 - D'OH!

While working on my Christmas Decorations on the afternoon of December 21st, 2013, I heard dozens of gunshots to the North. My neighbor across the street and I chatted about it briefly (I had heard these before) and he explained there was some unincorporated land where people shot geese. I didn't think too much about it and went back to work fixing the Santa Balloon! ;-)

So the next morning, I'm shoveling snow ... and my neighbor to the West says "Hey, I want to show you something"
As seen in the pictures below, a bullet hit his house - YOWSERS!!!

He explained that about 2:30 in the afternoon, they heard a BANG ... and assumed a picture had fallen or something in the house. After looking all over and not finding it, they moved on. That evening, he noticed the damage next to his front door ... and then a rifle bullet laying right underneath it! He called the police who made a report and took the bullet - said either a .308 or 30-06.

As seen in this YouTube video, I was in my front yard less than a 100' away shortly after the bullet hit - D'OH!

Here's the wide-angle view looking from the North

neighborhood bullet 1

As seen below, this is close to the exact direction the bullet was moving

neighborhood bullet 3

neighborhood bullet 5

Closeups of the bullet damage

neighborhood bullet 6

neighborhood bullet 7

neighborhood bullet 8

neighborhood bullet 10

neighborhood bullet 9

I put a compass next to the wood paneling on the door - it is oriented on a 60° heading
So based on the impact, here's my guess on the approximate trajectory of the incoming bullet
The vertical angle of impact was slightly less than 30°, so it might be possible to get an approximate distance

neighborhood bullet trajectory
2013/12/26 Update: I talked with Officer Winter of the Lafayette Police who handled this call - case #130004077. He felt that since the bullet did not penetrate deeply and was not deformed meant it had travelled a long way and slowed down - so probably the end of a parabolic trajectory. He said it was probably either a .30-06 or .308 round.

There isn't much they can do to track down the shooter and shooting is legal in the unincorporated land to the NE of our neighborhood ... although unsafe shooting can result in a reckless endangerment charge. Since the shot almost certainly originated on Boulder Country Land, he also filed the report with them and both police forces will keep an eye (and ear!) out for more shooting.

Hopefully this was an isolated incident - we both agreed it would be a terrible tragedy if a person was hit by a stray bullet.