The New Jersey State Police are investigating a report of gunfire this month at the Sussex County home of Lou Dobbs, the outspoken CNN anchor and radio host.

Mr. Dobbs described the shooting on his syndicated radio program this week and suggested that his family had been singled out because of his views on illegal immigration and border security.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Lou Dobbs has been outspoken about illegal immigration.

Investigators have not reached the same conclusion. “It’s unclear at this point what the intended target was,” Sgt. Stephen Jones of the State Police said Friday.

One bullet struck the siding of Mr. Dobbs’s home, about 60 miles northwest of New York City, on Oct. 5. In the radio broadcast, Mr. Dobbs said his wife was standing “not 15 feet away” at the time.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Dobbs said the shooting followed a series of threatening phone calls. “They were coming with great regularity” in the months before the gunshot, he said. “Since that shot was fired, we have not received a single phone call.”

Mr. Dobbs said he did not report the threats to the police. He also said a fire had been started on his property a couple of months ago, and he said he did report that to the authorities.

Mr. Dobbs is a longtime proponent of strict enforcement of immigration laws. His critics, who say he spreads misinformation about immigrants, have stepped up efforts in recent months to have him fired. A coalition of Hispanic advocacy groups pegged one campaign to CNN’s broadcast last week of a four-hour documentary, “Latinos in America.” The groups said it was hypocritical for the network to woo Hispanic viewers while Mr. Dobbs was on the payroll.

Mr. Dobbs regularly talks about his critics’ vitriol. “Fringe ethnocentric groups have been calling for my head, figuratively,” for some time, he said Friday.

The shooting seems to have heightened Mr. Dobbs’s sense of discord. After saying Monday on his radio program that “they’ve now fired a shot at my house” without specifying whom he meant, he added, “If anybody thinks that we’re not engaged in a battle for the soul of this country right now, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Mr. Dobbs said on CNN on Thursday that the leader of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the pro-immigration groups that he has criticized, had called to express his concern about the incident.

After the gunshot was reported on Oct. 5, troopers met with Mr. Dobbs’s wife and determined that the bullet came from a rifle. “It’s not been determined at this point where it came from, or who shot the gun,” Sergeant Jones said.

Bill Ross, a longtime neighbor of Mr. Dobbs’s, said gunshots were common in the area.

“Every day almost, it seems like somebody is target-practicing,” he said. “To hear a gunshot, I don’t think anything of it.”

Several neighbors said Mr. Dobbs does not allow hunters on his property. Regardless, “everyone around here likes him,” said Rocky Russo, who was dressed in camouflage gear and bowhunting for white-tailed deer near Mr. Dobbs’s property on Friday. The gunshot, he said, “might have been some idiot taking a shot at a squirrel in a tree. Who knows?”

Sergeant Jones said reports of gunfire go up this time of year. Asked if it was possible the bullet that hit his house was a stray, Mr. Dobbs said he could not rule anything out. He said that a state trooper had told him “point blank, there’s too many things happening for it to be a coincidence.”

CNN’s security staff have monitored threats against him for years. A network spokeswoman declined to comment.

Al Baker and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/nyregion/31dobbs.html