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Hunting & Fishing What would you do?

VaFarmer1

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Mar 6, 2011
177
14
61
Southwest Virginia
Over here in NC at our other property 186 acres
I was in the barn early doing some maintenance on a tractor and some orange caught my eye across the ridge.
Got on the atv & went to investigate. Well sure enough it was a guy hunting. He stepped in behind some pines figuring I didn't see him.
Once he realized he was spotted he stepped out and walked over to me & said I guess I'm on private property. I said well since it's posted all over the place you probably didn't have to guess to hard.
Anyway the guy was probably in his mid to late sixty's carrying a 25-06. (deer season is not even open here till monday)
I kindly told him that I didn't appreciate that he was hunting on my land without permission & he would have to hunt elsewhere.
BS'd with him for a minute or two & then pointed him the direction of the gate.
Wife got pissed at me & said I should have had him arrested. ( I did tell him if he came back in it wouldn't go so well for him)
Just wondered how some of you would have handled this. Maybe if the guy was a jerk or something I would have called the warden but I kinda felt like I got my point across without the law getting involved.
 
Re: What would you do?

I have a couple stories however I’m not about to post them up and catch a bunch of flak. Let’s just say all of mine ended less cordially then yours.
 
Re: What would you do?

1st off, if the deer hunt doesn't start for a week or whatever, then he was planning on breaking the law, right?? I do however appreciate the situation. My brother and I once found ourselves on some extreme poorly posted private land. The owner (at least he said so)did similar to what you did, except he first pretended to be all chummy and nice till he found out everything he wanted to know about us, then he turned into an asshole. We apoligized profusely and made our way out, we found two "no trespassing" signs in our half mile walk back, one was face down in the dirt, and one was so sun faded it was barely visible, and all the gates were open. I certainly don't think it's right,but accidents can happen. So its nice for a land owner to be somewhat reasonable about it.

ETA: curious about the age reference, I have seen far too many "older guys" get away with breakin the rules while us younger guys get railed. I once saw a old guy get off for shooting a mature bull in a spike only area claiming"I've hunted there for years"
 
Re: What would you do?

Your wife is probably upset ONLY because you could have been harmed.

You sized the situation and took appropriate action, and while your wife does know that, she's just worried. All spouses are like that, or should be!

You done good.
 
Re: What would you do?

One note I will add. I made everyone I ran into on my farm empty their rifle and put the shells in their pocket. I'm not about to catch a bullet in the back.
 
Re: What would you do?

We had a farm when I was young and at first we let hunters hunt on it during phesant season here. Over the years alot of farm equipmint got shot up during the season and the hunters got just too close to the house when shooting the birds. Some shot phesants landed in the fenced yard and my mother had to run off those climbing over our fence to retrive their birds. They should have come to the door politely and ask first to enter the fenced off yard. Mother had one guy who was drunk pull down on her with his shotgun and she cut loose at him with a .357 pistol while the guy was coming over the fence. Law got involved afterward. That was it. Land was posted and no one was allowed to hunt there anymore. Just a few assholes can ruin it for the rest.
 
Re: What would you do?

Call the game warden and let them deal with it. We've had these issues on our farm, the only way they will go away is if the violators pay a fine. If all a tresspasser gets from you is "your tresspassing, please leave", they will come back.

One guy helped himself to a deer on my place. I called the warden who discovered the man had no deer tag, and no FOID (Illinois). That was a lot more than just simple tresspass. The guy lost his gun over the deal and had to pay a few hundred dollars in fines.
 
Re: What would you do?

Most poachers are like hogs, if you stay after them and they see you enough, 9 times out of 10 they will find somewhere else to go (1 out of 10 are usually worse and take it as a challenge to be a better poacher). I say anytime you can to get the game warden involved, do it. It lets the rest of the ones not doing right that your place is not the one to poach

It not even being deer season yet (if thats what he was attempting to poach) then he knew he was breaking the law no matter if he knew he was on private property or not (seems he did since he ducked behind a pine). Call the law next time, let them know you have a problem and they will usually patrol your area a little more often. It usually helps get the message out to not trespass/poach here. Also, some hard core poachers are convicted felons who do not want to be caught with a firearm so be extremely careful especially at night. Its not a good idea to approach any of them unarmed, I like to make sure poachers know I'm better armed than they are and show as much presence around the property possible.
 
Re: What would you do?

You handled it well. You got your point across. You can't be sure what he was hunting, you could only assume. And since he didn't kill anything out of season that you know of, the only law he has broken was trespassing on your property. Yeah you had the right to call the LEO's, but you chose a warning instead. Seems like you did a good thing. Now if he comes back, I would get the LEO's involved since you have gone out of your way to warn him and give him a fair chance to walk the line.

I wouldn't classify this person as a poacher, as most don't wear bright hunter orange to poach. Maybe he got his dates screwed up?

Point is, you did the right thing.
 
Re: What would you do?

I agree. You handled it well. And if he comes back then don't approach him, just call your local LE. Let LE know (hopefully over coffee) about it now in case he does (or someone else) comes back.
 
Re: What would you do?

I have a piece of deer hunting ground half a mile from my house. That being said, you would think it would be easy to keep people off of it. I have no trespassing signs at all lanes, entrances. I have put over a decade of work in food plots ect into this place. After the deer started stacking up and getting big they came out of the woodwork. I have had people driving down the highway just stop and go hunting. After I called the law on a guy most of the bs stopped. People always want to show up after the work is done. I don't screw around with the idiots anymore. The first time I catch them they get the law. Once the word gets around they will try to screw with someone else.

good luck
Rthur
 
Re: What would you do?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Don't Tread On Me!</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
I wouldn't classify this person as a poacher, as most don't wear bright hunter orange to poach. </div></div>Good point, most don't but some play the "I didn't know" game pretty good too. The fact that the guy hid behind a tree tells me he knew and that probably would have made me want to call the warden.
 
Re: What would you do?

My favorite poacher's quote is... "I didn't know anyone owned this land". Hahaha WTF? Pretty much every piece of land in the US is spoken for and many people also have a lot of time, money and pride invested in it.

... "I thought this was ol' P.O. Sted's place, he gave me permission (POSTED)

What does a <span style="color: #CC0000"><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">POSTED</span></span></span> sign mean to a poacher? <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">P</span></span>lenty <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">O</span></span>f <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">S</span></span>quirels <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">T</span></span>urkeys <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">E</span></span>ven <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">D</span></span>ucks

Some people just don't get it and think managers and landowners are dicks for policing their property but they need to look at it from the other side. If you heard some commotion in your yard and looked out the window and saw someone digging up your shrubs and loading them in their truck...would they get a free pass? "Its ok this time but don't come back" isn't gonna cut it for most people.
 
Re: What would you do?

This guy must be an IDIOT. Who in their right mind wears blaze orange when trespassing/hunting illegaly?!?
Some good words of wisdom given to me by my grandfather at an early enough age that served me well in my carefree, reckless youth, "If you are gonna do something wrong, don't draw attention to yourself while doing it." Of course, my great, great grandfather was a bootlegger waaaay back in the day and went down in a blaze of glory when the law finally caught up w/ him
Desperado to the Death
 
Re: What would you do?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: redirt78</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

What does a <span style="color: #CC0000"><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">POSTED</span></span></span> sign mean to a poacher? <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">P</span></span>lenty <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">O</span></span>f <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">S</span></span>quirels <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">T</span></span>urkeys <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">E</span></span>ven <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #CC0000">D</span></span>ucks
</div></div>

yes this... i hear to many guys saying you did the right thing, by warning him... F that niose, the POSTED sign was the warning, i would of made his ass look like a piece of dog meat.
 
Re: What would you do?

No offense, Maxpower, but your great great grandfather came off as a dick in that story. The main questions I have is how did he slit his throat "from ear to ear" and shout out at the men around his house and how did he fire TWO shots to his head after that?

I did like how when things were going down, they notified the entire town and they all showed up to whoop a lil ass.
 
Re: What would you do?

My parents have a recurring issue for many years on their property. It's so bad that my dad has POSTED signs every 20yd all the way around the property. He's confiscated keys and started calling the State Troopers to have people arrested and NOT the local game warden.

After the first year of giving guys a "Get off and don't come back" warning he caught a couple guys who said "Oh yeah, well I'm so-and-so's brother in law. He said I could hunt here." Turns out So-and-so is one of the local wardens. Turns out the guy is popped a couple times a year trespassing to hunt and his connections get him "dismissed".

My dad filed a complaint, he has done everything from shooting "bird bangers" and firecrackers and trip flares along the access roads.

He gave up with using the PA DNR and just started calling the State Troopers.

I somewhat agree with your "get lost" warning, however I would have written down the guy's DL info and made him sign/date it as an omission that he was on the property. This is then a clear statement of acknowledgement that if he's found on the property again that he's going to be prosecuted for it.
 
Re: What would you do?

LOL! No offense taken. I'm sure that he brought whatever trouble he got upon himself, thus the words of wisdom from my grandfather.
wink.gif
Journalism hasn't changed at all since its conception....Woodward PA isn't big enough to host 'hundreds of people' Hell the population is only 126 today! LOL. And while the story of Etlinger is interesting enough(though SLIGHTLY embellished), the story behind the connection between my grandfather and my grandmother that was completely unknown until my great grandmother on grandma's side finally let the cat out of the bag on her deathbed- Etlinger's son was grandma's father and the boy that was almost hit by a stray bullet was my great grandfather on grandpa's side....
crazy.gif
confused.gif
shocked.gif
And the whole story I learned about from the original 1894 newspaper I found in the attic going thru stuff as a kid, years before any of the details were revealed.
"the bullets hitting the house sounded like rain on a metal roof" !?!?! But they had no idea where the wife and kids were when they decided they should just shoot the house full of holes and hope one hits Etlinger and no one else?
shocked.gif
I LOVE the village of Woodward though, hope it doesn't chance too much over the next decade or two, I'd love to live there someday...
 
Re: What would you do?

I've had problrms with a few poachers over the years. One of them started to get agressive with me until he poked his head in the passenger window of my pickup and realised that I had a 44 Magnum revolver in my lap. Now I just call the sheriff and let him deal with them. Also, my wife prefers that I don't go into commando mode anymore.
 
Re: What would you do?

Let me start off by saying I see you are in VA and talk about property in NC, so this makes me wonder if some of the property we have, and mostly where I hunt isn't pretty close to you. It's on the VA/NC border literally about 1.5 miles from the NC line. I know there are a couple of other guys on here that are from this area.

Anyway, I've got mixed feelings of this having been on both sides of this. I say both sides, because when I was younger I was with a group of guys that I hunted with in an area I didn't know very well and they dropped me off at the edge of the woods and told me to go into the woods and explained where to go. It was on a farm we had permission to hunt on. I got in there just fine, but coming out everything looked totally different and I got lost. I walked and walked and walked in the direction I'd come in and never found my way out. I eventually walked up on a house in the opposite direction that's next door the the property I was supposed to be on. I finally decided that I'd just head on out and walk back down through the ditch the half a mile or so to where I'd been. I unloaded my gun and walked on out. I made it about halfway across his yard, when he came out yelling telling me how he didn't allow hunting on his property, and how he was going to call the Game Warden. I explained to him where I was hunting, what had happened to me, that I didn't know the area, and what was going on. He calmed down, and pointed me in the correct direction to go, but was very stern about how upset he was that I was on his land. I apologized several times, and it was the honest truth that I was lost and just trying to get out of the woods. I'd taken every step I thought I could by unloading my gun and making sure it was obvious I wasn't hunting before walking out right by his house.

Ever since that time I guess I have a soft spot, because I realize that some guys really aren't lying about why they are on your land, and it's not always on purpose.

However, on the other hand in the last couple of years we have been having more and more problems with other hunters. I've been just giving them warnings and trying to find out what was going on for the past few years, but this year, I'm to the point where I'm tired of it, and most likely just going to call the Game Warden and let them sort it out. I mean obviously if a 15 year old kid that lives 3 hours away comes wondering up lost like I did, I'm probably not going to be calling the Game Warden, but that's about the only situation I can think that I won't.

The start of the problems we've had is last year on the last day of hunting season and buddy and I had walked into the woods on our land that we have in the mountains and don't often get to hunt even though it's actually closer to where I live. I hadn't gone far from the path, and I sent a ways into the woods. I sat there for about 30 minutes and see a truck come up the path. It's a drivable path, but it just will scratch the heck out of your truck trying to get up it. The guy probably in his mid 40's gets out and is clearly trying to hunt from his truck. We notice each other, and he proceeds to tell me that no hunting is allowed on this property as if to tell me to leave. I explained to him that it was my immediate family that owned this land. He proceeded to tell me, well he went down to talk to them about hunting permission as he'd hunted there since he was a kid and they told him no one was allowed to hunt there. At this point I remembered him and he had been down to the house about 7 or 8 years prior. I explained to him, that while we do hunt it, we don't allow others to hunt there because it's fairly often that we are riding dirtbikes, or kids are playing in the woods, or similar, and we don't want to risk something happening to one of them. He then tried to tell me that so and so owned some land on the other side of the path that was 5 acres and he was allowed to hunt there and some bear dogs were coming that way so he was coming to check on that land.

Funny, because the national park which hunting isn't allowed on starts where our land ends on the other side of the path. I chatted with him for a bit and just asked him not to come back again as we don't allow hunting.

Then fast forward to this year, and muzzle loading season starts. I didn't get to hunt nearly as much as I'd like, but got out a few times. After driving 2.5 hours to a different piece of land we have than the previous one and being sick on top of that I get out and before light and get in the stand. A few buddies are in their stands about 200 and 500 yards from me. About light, I start hearing dogs running. At this point I'm thinking wtf as hunting with dogs is illegal in black powder season. Now let me say that when regular season comes in I hunt with a group of guys that hunt with dogs, and I enjoy it, so I'm not anti dog hunting, but I am anti dog hunting when it's illegal, and when I've been suffering through sitting in the cold for over an hour, and then your dogs just start running through. At first I thought maybe their dogs got out of the pen by accident, and then I hear shooting and a truck taking off. A few minutes later I hear shooting in a different spot near where the dogs are. Then hear a truck take off again. This happens 2 or 3 times before I start getting bothered. My friend saw the dogs run a buck in front of their stand and by this point the whole group of us hunting is getting frustrated. We suspect we know who it was but never actually saw them shooting. This went on all morning, then all afternooon, then again the next morning. The more this happened the more aggravated we got. I never saw anyone or the dogs, I just heard the dogs and the people shooting, but after this experience if I catch anyone on our land other than the group of guys I hunt with, I'm just calling the Game Warden right away because this is starting to get ridiculous. Not only are they using dogs in a season where it's illegal, but they also clearly are using rifles not muzzle loaders.

To me this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. Now, I know the majority of guys aren't doing illegal stuff like this, but the few that are have ruined it for the rest of them. From this point on, I'm just calling the Game Warden anytime I catch anyone without permission on our land, and I don't really care the reason unless like I said above it's a kid or something that really appears to be lost.
 
Re: What would you do?

I would call the game warden now. Be proactive and let him do some investigating. Chances are you aren't the only ones having problems with these guys. If the warden knows about it now he can catch them on his time. Otherwise he could be clear across the county, on his day off, or busy making another arrest when you call with a problem.
 
Re: What would you do?

bigger man than me bro, I'd have cut his head off and wore it as a hat for the rest of the day workin in the barn
 
Re: What would you do?

the guy knew what he was doing, proof he was trying to hide...season not open yet, come on! I like to treat people like I would like to be treated and you were more than fair with him. but until he learns the hard way with a fine or loss of hunting rights, he will do it again.
 
Re: What would you do?

I would have done the same. In Ohio though. As others have posted about ground not being posted well. It is not the responsibility of the land owner to post his/her ground. It is the responsibility of the sportsman to know where they are. To make sure they have permission and so forth. That is how it is here anyways. My ground isn't posted. But that does not give anyone the right to come onto my ground without permission. My .02
 
Re: What would you do?

Thanks guy's for your thought's
I've been beating my self up over this since it happened wondering if I made the right choice. I tell myself it's because he was an older guy that I let it slide but then I'm like WTf why should it matter the age of the person. Funny thing is the place is actually over posted. My neighbor makes fun of me for having so many signs. About every hundred feet around the whole place.

Anyway keep it coming I'm really getting a lot out of your stories and thoughts
Seems like a bunch of you have had similar encounters.

VaJayJay Thanks.. That Head/hat visual gave me a good laugh. I wouldn't want to be caught on your land.
 
Re: What would you do?

The only time I will ever call a cop or a warden again is when they need to assist the coroner and write up a report.
 
Re: What would you do?

I was driving out of my pasture and i seen 2 guys walking in my cotton field that had just been stripped the day before. I have a friend that farns it for me so i thought it was a couple of his hands that had lost something. When i got on the road and seen there car i did not recognize it so i wrote the plate # down well in a few days i called a friend and he ran the plate, it came back as seen where a shooting happened he asked if it was still there i said no it was a few days ago. He said i am glad you did not drive up to them. I drove to where i seen the guys walking and found shotgun shells they had to lay the guns down before i saw them. I have it all fenced now.