Road "hunters"

IF you shoot in the direction of someone or at their vehicle, prepare to go to jail. The only reason to shoot at someone or vehicle is that you feel as your life is in danger and you would need to prove why you felt that way.

Times sure have changed in my lifetime. Hunters and their vehicles do get shot or shot at. Ten times as many hunters but only hear of the few bad ones. In my younger days, there were no such things as No Hunting signs in my part of the world. Farmers were too busy farming to worry about the neighbor kid plinking squirrels with a J.C.Penny .22. They didn't care if a dozen deer hunters made a drive which went through their farm. Deer was just one more thing to compete with their animals. As long as gates were closed and fences left intact, no problem.

My family was involved in coon hunting for 3 generations spanning at least 70 years. Many farmers went to sleep at night smiling and listening to some coon hound baying. When I took it up in 1963 with my own dog, I could hunt a valley which was probably 10 miles long and involved 15-20 active farms. One hunting family had certain rights originally and there would be hunters on the ground and someone following on the road to pick up the kills. Now I would be welcome on maybe 2 of those properties.

There was only one time back then when there was a bit of concern. Dog treed in a tall elm right beside a farmer's lawn. Wind blowing like crazy and coon at the very top and swaying back and forth like a shooting gallery target. After emptying the 6-shot clip and still no coon on the ground and dog still barking at 3AM, lights came on in the house. "Who in hell is out there?" Replied with my name and his response was to hit that ----ed thing! Next shot did and I was out of there.

Point is that times have very much changed and not for the better. Used to be that the game was for everyone and many farmers and their sons took their share and shared the rest. The land and everything growing on it came with the deed but the animals did not. They didn't belong to anyone any more than the people who walked on it. A deer jumping over a fence was not transferring its ownership from one property owner to the other. It had no master and the farmers knew that. Now the bulk of that land is owned by non-farmers who think that they are lord and master over every creature which lives on, passes through, or flies over their property. The fallacy of that is that they also recognize the state game laws which are contrary to such thinking. Said animals are either the landowner's to do as he wishes or subject to public ownership. Too many want to have it both ways and that's why the percentage of Americans who hunt is getting smaller each year. Used to be a right and now it's for the privileged few who can pay for it in leases. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

Martin

Martin, the other thing that has changed is the amount of poaching. The other thing that has changed is the number of unethical yo-yos out there, chasing wildlife with vehicles. The other thing that has changed is the lower amounts of good habitat. Neighboring farms push every tree, drain every slough, and then think it is their right to enter my land with no permission, because they have no wildlife on their own land.

Trust me, there is a strong reason why farmers post their land. For legal reasons, at least when land is posted, you can track these idiots down and prosecute them. If it were not posted, I can only imagine how much game would be massacred on my land. It is already bad enough. Why should farmers who maintain habitat, not have a right to hunt there themselves, controlling who enters their land? Why should outsiders have as much right to the wildlife, which because of the farmer, has been given a home in the first place? Sure it is everyone's wildlife, but most are not giving the animals a place to live any more.

Fewer still obey the game laws, and fewer still seem to believe in fair chase. Those things have also changed, and not for the better.

As a guy who tries to protect my land and my young family from idiots (who shoot holes in my barn wall, drive over my signs, drive through my standing crops), who call themselves hunters, maintains hundreds of acres of prime, and I mean PRIME habitat for wildlife, I do my share to share my land. If people respect my actions enough to ASK PERMISSION, so that I may know what is going on on MY OWN LAND, I often say yes. But these fools have to be weeded out somehow, and posting is the only way.

Wildlife is precious. But wildlife needs a place to live. As a farmer, I do not feel it is everyone elses right to traipse all over my well preserved habitat, taking advantage of what I alone have done to get the wildlife there in the first place.

They have not bought the land, they have not left hundreds of acres intact. They have not fed the wildlife through a tough winter, kept predators in balance so game can thrive. They do not line up to plant trees to ensure interconnecting blocks of habitat exist, in ways that will aid the wildlife. They do not plant cover crops, leaves strips of grain crops as feed, or ensure proper sodium is available.

Lots has changed, and not for the better indeed...

Is it your road? If so, you could hang a chain or gate... Had a neighbor that had the same issues until he chained off his road..

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Never let your fear decide your fate!
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit

Roads here are public domain, so it is beyond my power to chain the roads off. There are so many access points, and several different dirt roads to enter my land that are hidden, and have no one within miles, so the idiots can sneak around at will.

Especially at night. We never have traffic all year until fall. Suddenly folks care about this area. It is the lack of yards and people that make them hit this area so hard... blech.

The face of poaching has also changed oner the years.There have always been poachers btu the mind set is not the same.I killed a lot of game that you could consider poaching back then. People would take 7-8 squirrel instead of 5,but if they did they wouldn't go hunting the next day. In our minds then,it wasn't really poaching 'cause we didn't reach the total two day limit of 10. And if things were hard on the wildlife you didn't hunt hard. If the population of squirrel was down that year you'd back off and make sure you left PLENTY for seed for the next year.It was personal wildlife management. That doesn't make what we did right but the point being that isn't the poacher of today.They are not out there trying to feed the family like we were back then.
When I came back from Vietnam my grandfather had just cut off a woods for pulp. Lots of big stumps with sucker growth all in range of hickory,'cause he didn't let any hickory get cut.I sat on one of those stumps with 15 hickory within rifle range. That morning I took 19 ,went to the house and cleaned them,went out around the woods at mid day and killer 4 more sleeping on branches. Went to the house and cleaned them and returned to the same stump and killed 11 more that evening.Ya! That's poaching.But I never went back in the woods till a month later when the meat supply was gone.We knew it was considered poaching but we didn't see it as being wrong because of the "spirit of the law".By the word of the law we were wrong but by the spirit of the law we were staying in bounds by respecting and protecting the wildlife to insure future generations which was the spirit of the law.Of course I would never consider those foolish ways today.
The poacher of today isn't trying to feed his family and doesn't care about the future of wildlife or peoples property rights.The problem is much deeper that poaching. It is a cultural change for the last few generations.People now have no vestment in the country,family,wildlife or anything else. They would not consider that it was their duty to go into military service and do your duty."why should I. Let some other fool risk their life"
Sorry for the rant!


Wade

Wow, that is a good post, Wade. Well put! The poachers of yesteryear would not shoot an elk, drive through a crop to pick it up, deduce it is too small, and leave it there to rot, wasting 400 lbs of meat. The poachers of yesteryear would at least use the animals.

The poaching thing used to be a wink-wink thing when it was a poor family or a farmer trying to scratch out a living on marginal soil. My favorite game warden in the past grew up with my father. Both were farm boys who used every chance to put some extra meat on the table. The warden was a great one because he had also pulled every trick in the books.

Sometime in the 1970s that changed around here. Less chance for hunting opportunities but growing population with same desire for wild meat. Number of active farms declined and those families moved to the cities. That meant that the meat had to come to them instead of them going to the meat. There was a growing market for it. Poaching became more sophisticated and the same for detection. Listening devices were set up to triangulate gunshots at night. Planes were equipped with infra-red cameras. (Warden in plane once directed ground crew to where they would find a rifle thrown out of a car window.) Just today there's an article in our state paper of a poacher in Grant County with 14 deer carcasses. That's not a case of someone shooting them for need but as a business. Problem is that despite the fact that he probably didn't even have a small game license, the public will consider him as just one more bad hunter.

Martin

Around here hunting was never a good or legal excuse to run other people's properties at least for the last 90 years or more. My grandfather sent off many tresspassers and called the game warden a time or two. If someone asked he usually gave permission but he felt if you wanted to hunt, trap, ride horses and such you could work hard and buy your own land like he did. The farm was for his family and some yahoo shooting at the house or killing his cattle was a risk to his family.

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I ask for so little. Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave. Jareth, Labyrinth

I grew up on a farm in northern Michigan and seen first hand what the people from the cities did when they came north to hunt. They though nothing about driving across a newly seeded hay field, leaving gates open, cutting a hole in a brand new woven wire fence dad and us boys took several weeks to set post and stretch and staple up. The hay field they though was a real good place to set up their empty beer bottles and whiskey bottles to target practice on. Gee what fun to run the suv down corn rows and watch the corn break down in front of it.

When the law was called back then the first thing they asked was IS THE LAND POSTED. If it wasn't they didn't want to fool with it cause the trespassing pukes would get off scott free in court. And that is how my folks farm got posted and a fence on every road side border.

Where I live now I've had people trespass and tell me they used to own the place and didn't sell their right to hunt the place in the future. I've heard so many excuses I don't even bother talking to them. I make every effort to get a picture on them near a land mark on my property and a picture of their car/truck and call the law and file a complaint. We have gotten 6 of 6 of them that way.

Last fall my wife looks out the kitchen window and says to me there is some one messing around the pole barn. I grab the camera and get his picture then go out and ask him what he thinks he is doing. He gives me this song and dance that he is tracking a wounded deer. Sorry Michigan City hunter doesn't know the law (can't be on my property period with out permission.) and I guess to stupid to know the wounded deer would not open the barn door and go in and close the door behind it. He was not happy when the sheriff deputy gave him the appearance ticket, instead of just paying the fine he went to court with it. He paid 1500.00 in fine 3 times what he would have paid if he had just paid. Lost his hunting privileges for 5 years and I have no clue what his lawyer charges. I had his picture by my barn, pictures of the many no trespassing signs along my fence lines and even the two huge signs on each side of my drive way.

I have worked long and hard to buy my place. I worked 7 days a week 12 hours a day for several years, we never had cable TV or a dish satellite, We didn't go out to expensive restaurants to eat and did with out a lot of things to have this place and I am supposed to open it up to people who won't make the sacrifice to buy their own land to hunt. I think not.

I have does that will almost eat from my hand. One used to play with my old yellow lab dog.

Al

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Garden View Apiaries. Where the view is as sweet as the honey.
A member of SEMBA & MBA.

Same here. It's almost to the point that hunting or fishing isn't fun anymore. I can remember walking for miles in any direction from my house and hunt or fish all I wanted. A lot of times I might come across the land owner who would be cutting wood or brush, or checking their livestock and I would walk up to them and talk a while. They never cared that I was on their land and at that time it seemed just about everybody knew each other.

But it's so different now. A person can own hundreds of acres and never utilize the wild game on it for thier own purpose, but yet they don't want anyone else to either. Even if they don't have livestock on it, they don't want anyone shooting thier so called "Pets".

And believe me, it's not just strangers who have moved in and bought a place either. It can be your very own kinfolks who will keep you out. I have a 1st cuz who bought hundreds of acres of wooded land that I grew up hunting on and she does not want me hunt on it. She doesn't believe a person should kill wild game when we have grocery stores to buy our food now days.

But I hunt on her land anyway. If she wants to throw me in jail that fine. When I get out and the next time one of her cows crosses the fence line onto my property, it's going in my freezer. All I want to do is save money on food and it saves me a big bundle of money if I can harvest 2 or 3 deer each year. In fact, with the cost of beef so high in the grocery stores, venison is the only steak I eat now days. But I'll be happy to suppliment my venison with her cows if she wants to get nasty about it.

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

Well Rifle season for deer opened yesterday and the madness is already in full swing. Just sat outside for 2 hours watching 4 trucks with by my count 10 guys circling stands of bush, tearing through the fields and being so loud I heard them coming for miles before I saw them. They sat right across the road from my property at a stand less than 50 yards from the road and positioned three trucks at one end while the last along with 4 guys entered from the opposite "pushing bush" as it's known around here. I literally shook my head thinking how the way they positioned themselves if anything did come running out they would have a perfect crossfire and probably hit each other or the trucks.

After no success at that stand they proceeded to cross the road and enter my neighbors property who has recently posted his entire property and personally told me nobody has permission to be on it other than me. Gave him a call but he's up north working this week so a call into the local CO with descriptions of the vehicles it is. I doubt they'll make it out here anytime soon though as saying they're understaffed is a huge understatement.

Again I'm pro-hunting, I hunt myself but what happened to anything resembling fair chase? 4 trucks tearing around bush with ten guys all I'm assuming carrying high powered rifles. I hunt on foot or in a blind or a treestand, I have to actually use skill to get an animal within distance and make an ethical shot. My grandfather is in his 70's and still loves to hunt, after a heart attack a few years ago and a couple major surgeries he can't walk like he used to so he hunts from his truck....I get that. He still follows the law, only hunts where he has permission and keeps his distance from roads and buildings.

I did smile a little bit today though, first thing this morning I watched a young buck walk into the same stand of bush the hunters later pushed. He ran out of there 15 minutes before the trucks showed up and into a smaller one on the neighbors property obviously hearing them coming a mile away. I watched closely to see if he moved out of there into larger stand but he never came out...the hunters circled that bush too and moved on only to watch him strut out a half hour later. Guess being lazy and hoping to scare something out with the big loud 4 x 4 didn't do the trick this time around.

We need hunting on foot rules in Saskatchewan. THAT is hunting. I hate how so many guys go about "hunting". These same idiots know nothing about the wildlife they seek out. They do nothing to preserve habitat. Ten guys pushing bush is not a skillfull "hunt". Of course the deer are going to run out and expose themselves.

Vehicles should by law be restricted to roads only. Once off a road, it should be on foot only. Whether the land is posted or not, hunters should be required by law to have written permission to hunt on private land. Firearms in vehicles should by law be encased.

These few things would improve the quality of the hunt for the real hunters, restore respect of hunters to the general public: it would restore good an proper landowner/hunter relations; It would promote fair chase, and ensure kids have proper upbringing into the hunting fraternity; It would allow for more clean kills; It would allow for safety; It would encourage a proper love for wildlife, and respect as well for the animals being pursued.

I think the gooberment is concerned that license sales would drop dramatically, and perhaps they would, because so many of these idiot slobs are too lazy to walk and enjoy nature.

IMO, this would be no big loss. It would allow for more liberal seasons for those of us who actually have respect, ethics, and a desire to do the right thing.

We need to push for changes to our laws. We need to implement some of these measures, and soon. The public perception of hunters is already weakening. Why destroy it completely with lax rules???

Dale, you may not care for this idea, but if all fails consider leasing hunting rights to a small hunting club. You can set the limits on the harvest and management of the wildlife. Paying club members do a great job of keeping an area free of hunters who are not suppose to be on the property.

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Even better is take the valve cores out of the stems. Tires with no air aren't going far. And 4 of them gets expensive 25-50 miles from town. Even better is put a nail through the tread right at the side wall. It means new tires. A set of 4 is about 6-800 bucks.

When they "hunt" from their truck, it is tough to remove the valve cores and or poke 'em with a nail, is the only trouble I see with this idea.

An old man I knew would weld a wore out sickle section to a spike and drive them into his two track roads. They could lose two or four tires if you wanted to double up, before they realized it.

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I'm a herd quitter, born and bred! Never been curried below the knees!