TRESPASSER!

i was out squirrel hunting yesterday when i noticed a blind that wasent there a week earlier, im positive im the only one who has permission to hunt the property. so today i was out looking for sign and as i was coming out through a gate i see i silver/white dodge pick up coming down the road. as soon as he saw me he turned around and gunned it. not the first time ive found trespassers there in 2 days last year. i had a car pull up to me when i was hunting only and when he saw me he left and my mom saw a guy back packing a blind in only to leave when he saw her. thinking about setting stands up to catch these guys. getting really sick of it!!

RRRRRR!! Nothing worse. It would be nice to really hang one of them up from a tree and hope the word gets out locally that you will prosecute. How about signs stating this? Or go old school and blacken some eyes….

The first step would be to make sure the property iS legally posted. Then string ’em up.
DT

IF you are sure nobody else is supposed to be there I would pull the stand and set it out by the road for the owner to pick up.

double check with the property owner, just to make sure
then pull the stand and take it to the property owner. screw leaving it somewhere for the trespasser to be able to retrieve it; if he wants it back, he can go explain to the property owner why it was out there in the first place

Or sell it on Craig’s list…

desperado wrote:

double check with the property owner, just to make sure
then pull the stand and take it to the property owner. screw leaving it somewhere for the trespasser to be able to retrieve it; if he wants it back, he can go explain to the property owner why it was out there in the first place

I have been down this road on a large tract of family owned farm property where only family had permission to hunt. One time my dad and I actually had a trespasser shoot at us as we took down his stand, claiming we were the trespasser! There is no other way to get it into a person’s head that they need permission to be on private land. Take the stand down if for sure you are the only one with permission and give it to the owner. Hopefully when the stand owner comes to claim it, he can be greeted by law enforcement with a trespassing citation. Chances are they wont show up to claim it, no nuts to ask for permission and a good chance none to ask for their property back.

Handle this very carefully. It sounds like it’s not your property so I would check and double check with the owner that he hasn’t given anyone else permission.

The last thing you want is to turn this into some big problem for the landowner whereby you become part of the issue. You want to handle this easily and quietly.

Nothing would be worse than to tear down a stand and then find out it belonged to Old Uncle Phil who didn’t bother to tell anyone he was hunting this year after taking the last 3 years off to recover from hernia surgery. There tends to be a LOT of hangers on with hunting where relatives get permission once and then basically treat it like their land from then on. Including often not even checking in every year to see if it’s still OK to hunt.

Check with the landowner and make double sure. If there’s agreement that there is a trespasser, I would also ask if the section isn’t properly posted if the landowner would allow you to put up proper signs. Then go out–not alone!–and remove the stand/blind whatever. That, combined with the increase in signs, should tell the perp you’re on to him and that people are watching the property.

Grouse

Good point Grouse. I bought a 40 of land to deer hunt 3 years ago. I still come across trespassers who think “Old Herbie” still owns the land and he told them they could hunt there whenever they wanted…

Of course they must not know Old Herbie is dead and I bought the land from his widow….3 years ago this last August!

I just tell them that I now own the land and will not be letting others hunt there.
I’m sure it will happen again this deer season, even though I have put up a chain gate and posted the land with my name on the signs…

Totally agree, Jonboy. An older couple owns the 40 on the north side of my property. The owner might come out for opening morning if it’s nice, but I’ll bet he hasn’t hunted the property for 7 of the last 10 years.

So when saw a pickup parked on the access road, my father called the owners and asked if they had given permission to hunt there. Nope. So about a half hour later, here comes a guy walking down the road so we just stopped and had a little chat.

Well he knew the couple who owned the property, he was the friend of one of the owner’s sons. So dad asked him, did you get permission this year to hunt here?

“Well, no, didn’t think I needed to. They were so good about it back when I first asked 10 years ago, I just figured…”

That’s the way some people are, they just figure permission once is permission forever. But you still want to be careful about how you handle them.

Grouse

i was setting up a blind and 2 kids came out from the woods while i was setting up the blind, so i asked them if they had permission and the said yes(i wasent going to yell at them) . i asked from who, and they said they had it from the wrong person. i told them who actually owned the property. they also said some one had try to cut the locks on their stand. the also said they caught someone sitting in it and were scared to approach him, so i asked them if they can try and get the licence plates numbers from any vehicle that was there. they said theve seen about 10 different vehicles there in about 2 weeks. so thats one step closer to catching these guys i guess.

Sounds like you have your hands full.
DT