I came here off-season in 2016, parked my car on the dirt road and set up camp at a spot next to the creek. Around 7:30PM nearby was semi-automatic gunfire, shooting along the creek (illegal) and then a spray of bullets went into the trees above/surrounding my campsite. I ducked for cover and scrambled away, after the shots stopped I quietly snuck back towards my car where I saw a group of men standing in the back of a red pickup truck with guns on them on the other side of the creek. At the time there was a huge concrete barrier before the bridge to cross the creek, and they were on the other side of it. I watched them drive back into the forest and decided I didn’t want to be there anymore so I quickly broke down camp and smashed it all back into my car. That’s when I realized the car was completely surrounded by bullet shells. So, they hadn’t just been shooting from the truck but from around my car into the campground. Likely just to scare us and tell us to leave. But it was severely dangerous and we called the sheriff as soon as we had cell reception. He explained, unforgettably, “the forest is huge, things like this happen, it would be a waste of time to go looking for those people.”
A few years later, a couple was shot to death in the mt hood national forest. A few years before that, a bullet pierced the tent of a father and son camping out there. I found this article:
https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2013/08/illegal_target_shooting_threat.html
So, while this campground is beautiful and lovely, and surely my experience was among a few isolated events, and odds are EXTREMELY low you’ll have a similar experience, I have to share what happened to me & I won’t ever go back here. I don’t mess around with mt hood NF much at all, frankly.