Trespassing

Had to vent a little...

Yesterday, while at my cabin in the middle of the woods,  I hear voices up on my driveway. I drove up to see what’s going on, and find a guy holding a beer with his young daughter. At this point he’s a couple hundred yards off the public road.

I politely asked him how he was doing, and informed him he was on private property. He then looked at me like I had three heads. Thinking he didn’t get the point, I told him he just walked past three “no trespassing” signs. 

His response? “I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal”. 

Taking into account he had his young daughter with him, I was very calm and factual. I told him he’s walking right through the middle of my hunting and shooting land, and what he’s doing is illegal. 

He continued to push and said “he’s just going for a walk with his daughter”. I politely told him he should set a better example for his daughter by not blatantly ignoring trespass laws. After that, he turned around and left.

People never cease to amaze me. 

Unfortunately the "locals" will quickly learn your patterns and treat your property as one of their own.  Even public land will be scoured for trail cameras and tree stands when you may not be there, even when legally put up.  It is the world we now live in.

It happens to us all the time.  We have a 50 acre parcel along the county road and the two neighbors to the north and west of us (we get along with them fine) have deeded access to go through our property. All of us have done great jobs grooming a nice main road to get through and to our respected properties. All of us have clearly posted no trespassing signs and we have had nonstop idiots trespassing since the beginning of time.  People literally drive their trucks from our land all the way to the far back of the neighbor's property.  It's a little over 1 1/4 miles to get across our 50 acres and the two neighbor's 160 acres.  It's just really frustraiting.  I caught one lady walking her dog down the middle of our property during bow season.  Same excuse as above "I thought it looked like a nice place for a walk".  Also had a guy drive his truck right up to my rifle stand asking for directions to some random person's property.

In the big scheme of things, we’ve been pretty fortunate with trespassers in the decades we’ve had the property.

About ten years ago, I was cutting wood and found a mini van parallel parked across half of my driveway, off the public road. This was directly below a no trespassing sign.

I hung around to see what was going on, and eventually an elderly lady came walking back to the van. She said she thought it would be a good place to park while going for a stroll. 

I feel your pain!  I owned 40 acres in Jackson County and had constant trespass problems. I had it posted on all four sides and had a locked gate on a private road. I had found signs of someone using my tree stands with cigarette butts below two of the stands with soda and pop cans on my road. My cameras were either twisted off their original postion or the SD Cards were stolen. I made several calls to the Sheriff's Office being told that the trespassers were mostly high school kids partying. I had one Sheriff's Dept. supervisor suggest that I should be dropped off and hide in the woods to catch the trespassers. I couldn't belive what I was being told never calling them again whenever I found signs of trespassing. I no longer own the property and hunt else where not having those problems anymore. Good Luck in todays world if you own property. It appears that your land is everyones land.

oh, it is talked about...people moving from the cities, buying up land, and are pushy to the limit....there are bad apples everywhere....rural and city....but the arrogance goes to city for the most part......