A Kootenai County sheriff’s candidate said Wednesday he’s been busy this week shooting down rumors that he’s a reckless and arrogant hunter.

Sheriff candidate Richard Whitehead has been targeted on Facebook by a Lancaster Road property owner who Whitehead said has repeatedly harassed him about hunting a 15-acre parcel near the corner or Rimrock and Lancaster roads in Hayden.

It’s the same property owner who, Whitehead said, has a deer stand overlooking the same chunk of ground that Whitehead hunts from a blind.

“The hypocrisy of him telling me where I can hunt,” Whitehead concluded.

He’s talking about a video posted on Facebook by Michael B. Piper of Hayden Lake, a video that’s been circulating this week throughout the community.

Piper, a longtime resident and former Idaho Fish and Game volunteer, tells viewers that through his 25-year tenure as a firearms safety instructor, he has taught many North Idahoans how to safely use firearms.

“I taught many of you, and your children,” Piper says in the video. “Hunting is a way of life here in North Idaho, (but) setting up a deer blind in a residential area 150 feet from someone else’s house with a big game rifle is inherently dangerous and it certainly isn’t very smart.”

The two-minute slam fest at Whitehead’s expense berates the retired law man — Whitehead is a former military police officer who also served as a Texas lawman and sheriff’s lieutenant — as being careless with firearms, and a liar.

Several attempts to reach Piper for comment Wednesday were unsuccessful.

According to Whitehead, the confrontation started two years ago when Whitehead and his former law enforcement buddies set up a deer blind on 15 acres with a view of a creek bottom.

“It faces downhill and is backed by a dirt wall,” Whitehead said.

The law doesn’t prohibit hunting the 15 acres, which Whitehead said once belonged to Piper, who sold it to the present land owner. Whitehead several years ago set up a blind that looks downhill, and most of the shots taken by hunters are at 40 yards.

“If it wasn’t safe and it wasn’t legal, I wouldn’t be there,” said Whitehead, who operates a police officer field training and forensic consulting business.

Whitehead said that outside of a water easement Piper has across the property, he is not allowed on the land. Whitehead said Piper has been trespassed by deputies and the landowner.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that Piper was trespassed on Oct. 11.

In addition, Whitehead said that Piper intimated he was a Fish and Game officer when he approached Whitehead, who hunted from the blind. He said Piper has repeatedly harassed Whitehead.

“Idaho Fish and Game really frowns upon people harassing hunters who are legally hunting,” Whitehead said.

He said Wednesday that he reported Piper’s latest harassment to the game department.

In his video, Piper accuses the sheriff’s candidate of misconduct.

“What’s to keep him from lying on a police report?” Piper asks. “If he hasn’t already.”

In the video, Piper is dressed in a blue guide shirt over a white turtleneck, his large glasses and hand gestures projecting an air of tutorial dignity.

“I learned a lot about Richard Whitehead in the past few months, and I wonder: Is there anything else?” he says.

Whitehead thinks Piper’s angst stems from his former tie to the land, and that Piper still wants to control what happens there.

“That is what’s really going on here,” Whitehead said.