Trespassers have sunk to a new low

I have a chunk of land that has two roads leading into it. One road is from a neighbor's place and the other is from the state road. I left both open as I have some friends whom I allow to use my land to exercise dogs, hunt, and just hide out from wives. This was all well and good untill someone drove down the drive, about 30 yards from the state road and shot a deer from the truck. This was done at night, as I was there the evening before and again the next morning about an hour before sun up. They did not try to track the deer and I spent my Saturday tracking a wounded deer. I now keep my property locked and my same buddies have a key. I used heavy steel cable which is very visable and tough to cut. I always had signs, but around here, you either own the land or have permission to use it, or you are tresspassing and breaking the law. Some people dont respect property rights. The ---- thing is, if they had asked to hunt my land I may have let them, instead the snuck on in the dark of night and maimed a deer. I would certainly like to see them thrown in jail if caught, but I would take greater satisfaction in putting a whuppin' on them. They caused a deer several hours of pain and agony, the least I could do is let them have a sample.

Now that I got that off my chest. Private property is just that, private. I did not buy my truck so anyone who wanted to can use it. I did not buy my land so that strangers could come on it. If you think that private land should be enjoyed by anyone, thats fine, buy some and share, but I want to enjoy mine in peace, so I only allow my freinds and family on it. It is very hard to catch a tresspasser and anyone willing to cut a fence on a strangers land is doing a very bad thing and should be punished. But how will a sheriff's deputy stake out my land when he has a whole county to look after? Call a cop when someone is tresspassing on rural land? You think the tresspasser will just hang out untill the cop arrives? I say teach them a lesson when you can, as long as you dont kill, I am all for putting the fear into them and a bruises heal up eventually...so do broken ribs. My biggest fear is if my wife is out by herself and some tresspassers approach. What is she going to do? Wait for a cop?

I have not had any problems since putting up my steel cable, and I hope that stays so. I just wish more people had the sense to know that tresspassing is illegal, no matter what your intentions are, without permission, you are breaking the law.

Dixy,

Let's be clear. I am not condoning trespassing!

From your previous post you mentioned that the gates are in the middle of your property and on either side of the railroad tracks. I assume that they were placed there to keep people and animals off the tracks.

1. Is your trail posted at the boundaries on each side of your property? Maybe the ATVs think they are on public land (or an open trail) until they come upon the gates. Maybe you need to post your land on the boundaries of your property.

2. Could you erect gates at the property lines? That way trespassers would be stopped before being halfway across your land.

Just some ideas. Good luck in finding a solution.

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Diamondtim

You can tell what someone thinks by reading the bumper stickers on their car. You can also tell if they think at all.

You could install a hidden camera. I've done that on state property to catch people trespassing on a closed trail.

You could also install a trail monitor that records the time and date. After a while you may be able to predict when the perp will be trespassing. Right after school or work? Saturday afternoon?

I would also be talking with local law enforcement about the trail damage and illegal trespass. Don't assume they will be helpful though. One property owner in northern MN caught some ATV trespassers on his property. One of the illegal riders was a deputy sheriff.

They will quit when it becomes in their best interest to quit and not before. If it were my property I would lay some barbed wire on the trail so the tires would pick it up and wrap it around the axle.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

A law that is impossible to enforce is nothing more then pie in the sky. As everyone has pointed out it is pretty near impossible to prevent ATVs from trespassing, and even harder to actually catch the perpetrators.

Once more, this has little to do with property rights and everything to do with your choice of entertainment. The same people who rant and rave about ATVs think they aren't harming anyone by skirting the edge of a neighbors field with their horse. Those who don't ride horses don't feel bad about picking their neighbors dandelions in the fence line to make their annual wine supply. ITS ALL THE SAME!

Around here, people post all kinds of land, regardless of whether it's private of public. Hydro right of way trails are posted by the farmers who lease the land for farming purposes, even though the lease agreements specifically state that they do not have rights to control access to the said land. Farther north people with rights to a one acre hunt camp on crown land post the surrounding 300 acres, because they think they somehow have rights to it.

Anyone who enjoys motorized off road sports has on occasion found themselves on private property. Most leave, most are not "dirt bag scumbags" who "deserve to die."

Pete

I am a little shocked by the folks who view trespassing as a minor thing! The jerk that blatantly rips your gate off it's hinges to enter your property is exactly the same jerk who will sue you for everything you have when he trips over his own big feet on your property, or shoots his own kid while hunting drunk on your property. He will claim that you were negligent in not preventing you him from entering your property. Even if you win such a suit, you still have to pay an attorney to defend you.

My trespassers are mostly mountain bikers, and a more arrogant bunch of idiots you have never met! Our place is completely surrounded by National Forest, and the NF did put a trail that goes around our place, the mountain bikers won't use it, because they like the view of and from our place better, and in the fall they steal apples from our orchard. I have confronted them every time I catch them, and about a third have demanded that I prove to them that I own the place. I make them turn around and exit the same way the entered, and little by little the regulars are using the other trail. A forest ranger said when she catches them in areas that aren't approved for mountain bikes, she makes them carry them out!

A big part of my problem with trespassers is that a map company that caters to mountain bikers shows a public road going through my place. I have contacted them and the hippie that runs the company has no respect for property rights and says he will continue to publish the maps as he is doing. I am having a lawyer write a nasty letter, but I can't afford a lawsuit.

Right after we bought the place, someone placed a homemade cross welded from rebar, with initials on it along the trail leading into the property. My guess is that someone died there, and I have worried about a lawsuit over that. It is on a long uphill grade, and most of the bikers only do this as a hobby. Many are out of shape, even if they are skinny, they are gaping and wheezing the entire way, and I don't care to be liable for anything they do. Our property is only 42 acres but is zigzag in shape and I can't hear people until they are close to the house.

One day I arrived at my gate and discovered the chain was missing and the gate wide open. From the house I could see three truck loads of men down by the pond. I called the sheriff and went up and parked at my gate to wait for him. The trucks were full of hunters, all armed. They had also stolen several bushels of apples from my orchard. They came to my place because they knew that the orchard is there and they know the bears love apples. I am not anti-hunter, but I am anti trespasser, and should never have had to confront armed men on my own property!

One more thing, do what you can to help the neighbor who asked for it. He isn't a complainer. He cares about his investment and expects you to do the same.

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I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

While I have been known to be no great respecter of property lines in my wanderings, I do follow some basic rules of "do no harm" and "leave the place in better shape than you found it". I've packed out from my trespassing backpacks full of empty 10 year old beer bottles and other assorted trash I found. The most I ever take is a pound or two of wild edibles. For the most part, I'm not walking through people's yards, but there are large swatches of land in my area owned in absentia by people who-knows-where. If I knew the owner I'd try to get permission, as I have in the past with locals. As it is, I just tend to take a more Thoreau approach to the whole thing. I don't climb fences, I don't carry firearms, I don't cut down trees, and I walk instead of riding some mechanized thing or a horse. There you go, Texican. That's what's in the mind of THIS trespasser.

Snowmobilers and ATV riders are a different breed. Snowmobilers destroy small trees and anything else in their path. ATV riders leave deep ruts. Both are running a much greater risk of getting hurt and filing a lawsuit against you, and both are noisy and destructive.

The thing in your favor is that these motorized hobbyists tend to focus their hooliganism on the weekends. So that's really only two days you've got to monitor. Take a small tent out to the property, find a nice hidden place, and wait for them to show up. I'm not sure how you're going to stop them as they race by, but taking some photos for the sheriff might help.

The phrase "attractive nuisance" is a legal term of art. The fact patterns we have been discussing here to not come close to rising to the level of an attractive nuisance.

Anyone who has done the things some people have recommended on this thread is a criminal and should be in jail.

If you intentionally run down an ATV driving punk, even on your own land, you will very likely go to jail and then lose everything you own in a civil suit. Your insurance company would not cover your willful conduct, and you will end up a convicted felon without a penny to your name. But at least no one will ride an ATV on your (non-existant) land! Congratulations!

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"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." -- Winston Churchill

Pete, these same folks have visited me (unfortunately, some of them are relatives... I've "divorced" them, and disowned them...) and broken into my home, stole from my home, my barn, cut my fences... After my pa died back in 99, I decided I'd had enough. One of them was caught red handed, trespassing, and tried the bully bluff on me, and it backfired on him... He had a hold of my collar (thru the pickup window), I pulled a .44 out, pushed the barrel into his nose, cocked the trigger, and said hit me, please.... of course, it was sorry this and sorry that... just a perfect lil' gentleman... After that, ALL of the bad relatives have left me alone.

Bad Eggs are a problem for entire communities...

Richie, I did run one down... they got in their truck, and I chased them 15 miles to town, and called the law. Their rear bumper was beat up... my front bumper had no damage... They arrived and wouldn't prosecute them, even though they had no tail lights on their rig, they'd been trespassing, they were drunk, and had firearms. (They'd crossed the county line...) I was not arrested. Sheriff said he wished I'd let them take care of it... It takes our local LE 45 minutes to make it to my house, IF they have someone on duty. The law will not protect anyone from a crime... their purpose is to apprehend criminals after a law has been broken. We're pretty much on our own out here in the country. I also know that "attractive nuisance" is a legal term.

We have a pretty conservative voting base here. Criminals can't vote, and thus aren't included on jury's. Very few "reverse crimes" pass our grand jury system (where property owner beats crap out of trespassers/burglars). A man's reputation still has some weight here.... If it comes down to a jury believing Me or someone with dozens of entries in the jailhouse books (even their parents having them arrested for thievery), I feel confident I'd prevail.

We also have a liberal "castle law" in Texas now... Carjackings or crimes committed against a person in their vehicle are getting rare, since it's ok to use deadly force.

I wouldn't dream of doing the same thing in one of our 'blue states', or an urban area... Good lord, I'd be the criminal there, and the molly coddled criminal would be the saint... for sticking it to the man... poor disadvantaged economically depressed personages...(they have to support their meth habit somehow...)
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I think we can all agree trespassing is bad. ATV (wheels, tracks, whatever) trespass is bad. So we're all basically just discussing whether WE take responsibility for the problem or pawn it off onto someone else (LE) that may or may not even think it's worth their time investigating...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Too many lawyers...not enough farmers.

Farm thefts are at an all time high, and because of that, some of your trespassers are scoping out your possessions. One of our trespassers found that we had a 22 foot goose neck flatbed trailer that they wanted. Now when they found it they were either on foot or bike or ATV, but they returned, with a truck with a goose neck hitch in the bed and a pair of bolt cutters.

They cut the Edison lock off the gate and entered the property to steal the trailer. They replaced the Edison lock with a look alike lock of their own. They intended to come back again and again. The following night I was still so angry over the theft that I couldn't sleep. I heard someone trip and fall right outside my bedroom window! He yelled out a little when he did. I woke hubby and told him what I had heard. He told me to keep the lights off, and he would check it out. By the time he was dressed and outside the thieves had left, but the following morning their footprints and tire tracks were all over the place.

When I went to cook breakfast I tried to light the propane stove, but it wouldn't start. I checked the tank, and found that someone had turned the propane off, and the tire tracks in front of the tank told me that they were there to steal it. Most likely using the trailer they had just stolen from us. We filed a report with the Sheriff, but it has been nearly a year and I doubt we will ever get it back.

I will be getting a golf cart soon for running around the ranch and doing chores, checking fences etc. I will put some kind of rifle rack on it and carry one with me when I am out and about. Our place is surrounded by national Forest, and we have bears, cougars and lots of coyotes. If I need to defend myself or my livestock I will do so. If I confront a trespasser, the mere sight of the rifle should serve as a visual deterrent, even safely locked in it's carrier, and not pointed at them..

Many years ago I was a Customs Inspector on the Mexican Border. I am a woman, about 5'5". On several occasions I was confronted by individuals who either didn't want to submit for inspection, or didn't want to be arrested, and they looked me up and down and I could tell that they were thinking just how easy it would be to beat me up or even kill me, and then their eyes rested on my side arm, and they submitted.

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I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

Its unbelievable those here- and elsewhere that feel protecting ones property from criminals- and yes trespassers are criminals to you enlightened folk- is wrong.... How is someone who is hurt while performing a crime entitled to anything from the person they are commiting the crime against?


My property is and should be mine alone to decide what I want done to and on it. It is not for someone else to tell me they or anyone else should be allowed to do whatever they want.

For you that don't like the line across the trail- I have a legitimate question? Who says that someone else did not set that line? There is not likely proof that the landowner set it unless thay brag on it. Seems ta me iffin the landowner nevr admits to it it would be a stretch to prove he or she did it and not a sick trespasser?

I think that folks hurt doing illegal activities on anothers property should have NO RIGHTS civilly or criminally. They would not have been hurt if THEY were not doing illegal things to begin with. Ya don't want hurt stay off others property where ya are not welcome- it is in reality a pretty simple Item... I don't deal well with trespassers even on my city lot- I sure would not like em on acreage... I don't blieve thay have rights either although I will let them set traps for me and if they get hurt by them I won't shed a tear. I just know I would not do it myself...

The idiots and fools are the ones that support the ones who feel they can do what they want where they want and sue the owners of the land- thats INSANITY!

I wasn't going to say anything, but I feel it is time to add my personal two cents into the debate instead of just offering advice...

To me, there is ignorance, disrespect, and malice when it comes to trespassing. What I do and how I react depends on which of these three words I hang on the trespassers.

A couple of 12 year olds are out riding and do not realize they are on your land because you don't have it posted. That's ignorance. I am quick to forgive it AS I CORRECT IT. I would talk to the kids, put up signs, and call it handled. Heck, if the kids were apologetic and respectful and I knew their families, I would tell them just to ask first next time and let them have access. That is one way friends are made...

A couple of 16 years olds know its your property and ride on it when you are not home. That is disrespectful. That has to be stopped, but still in as friendly a way as possible. At 16, they should know better and what I ultimately do would depend on the reaction when they are caught.

And then there's malice - the kids who break things because they think its funny. The people who ride through your corn field, damaging your crop. The people who have already been warned who come back when they think you are not at home. The people who cost you time, money, and/or put you at danger. They are the ones that must be stopped and friendliness is not a requirement.

Example #1 - there are power lines on the back of your property on an easement. The local teens go back there are have paintball and pelletgun wars. You go talk to the teens and they are very polite, apologizing that they did nto realize that it was not public land. They offer to leave immediately. Pure ignorance, no worries, problem solved.

Other Extreme Example - Kids are having paintball and pelletgun fights on the back of your property. One of them thinks it is funny to start shooting at your barn. A pellet misses the barn and hits your window at the house. I would call 911 and say that people are on my land shooting SOMETHING at my house and that I am arming myself to go confront them in 5 MINUTES unless the police are onsite.

It all depends on the situation, but I if someone is doing obvious damage to property, livelihood, or people then I am going to arm myself and confront them IF (and only if) the local police can't do it.

How?

1000 years of Anglo-American common law, reinforced by specific statutes in every state of the Nation.


So such landowner would be lying under oath at trial, or, earlier, would be lying to a police officer and thereby obstructing an investigation? Then the landowner is a criminal, period. And perjury and obstruction are far more serious crimes than tresspassing.

So feel free to petition your legislature to change the law. That is NOT the law now. Period. Not negotiable or subject to debate.

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"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." -- Winston Churchill

Yep, that is a lawyer.

I don't know of any actual farmers who take the rather extreme view of tresspassers that I have seen on this and other threads. Farmers teld to value the rural tradition of open access.

It is "homesteaders" with survivalist tendancies who take these extreme positions.

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"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." -- Winston Churchill

I doubt you know too many actual farmers. Maybe city folks who retire to the country and read a lot of Martha Stewart. Lawyers dont farm.

That's why you aren't qualified to comment. You have city-minded ideas of property ownership, probably reinforced by years of living on top of dozens of neighbors. Nothing wrong with living that way, but TYPICALLY country folk have a more relaxed concept of property ownership. It's the relocated city folk around here who are the ones calling the cops every time a snowmobiler buzzes across the road allowance of their one acre lot. The farmers typically tip their hats and ask you to stay off the fields of winter wheat and by the way, "have a fun time."

TEXAN:

If you are having problems with crime and the perpetrators happen to be arriving on ATVs, try and separate your detesting of the individuals and your attitude toward the machines. It sounds to me like the "crime" of trespassing is likely just one more reason for you to hate these people.

Pete

Pete

I know plenty. And have farmed myself.

How about you?

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"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." -- Winston Churchill

Not true my friend- I never said I never owned property or had to deal with trespassers...


the truth is it should be and is my choice as to who will use my land and the time to ask permission is before you use my land. Maybe you live where the trespassersare nice and decent but last I checked they don't seem to chip in with chores or for taxes

Exactly. I hunt upland birds on four large farms in my immediate area. All of the farmers welcome hunters, fishermen, skiiers, snowmobilers, etc on their land.

I am also aware of plenty of people, many from away, who have a few acres and a moldering mobile home that they regard as their, "castle", to be defended by violence or the threat thereof from such scofflaws as lost hikers.

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"If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." -- Winston Churchill