Posted on 12/16/2015 1:13:37 PM PST by w1n1
There isn't a clear answer on deterring poachers. The subject itself brings a sharp pain to every landownerâs asses. The right way to handle this is to let the authorities handle this. The following is an excerpt from a landowner on this ordeal and how he handled it.
David was a proud new landowner. He bought his 640-acre place in the rural South and started fixing up the old farm house. His land had a garden, fields for planting, built wood duck boxes, and stocked two lakes with bass and pan fish.
Life was good for the new country landlord until one morning he heard a gunshot, then two, three, five and more. They were closeâon his property. No one had permission to hunt, so David got in his truck and took off for the back of his square mile of paradise, while his wife nervously watched him drive away.
Ten minutes later David spotted a pickup truck alongside a county road that abutted his land. Three men were near it, two of them across a fence on Davidâs property. A lifelong hunter, David sensed trouble, but he purposefully was unarmed as he drove up beside the men, stunned at what he saw.
Five wild hogs were dead on the ground, shot on David's land from a public roadway. The hogs were wild, but in Florida they are classified not as game animals, but private livestock, so penalties for shooting them are even more severe than illegally shooting wild game.
"Fellows, those are my hogs you got there," David said calmly.
"Them's wild pigs, no season, no limit," one of the men said fast and nervous. "Seen 'em cross the road, we pulled over and shot 'em 'fore they got to the fence - they jus' died on your side. We're fixin to load 'em and take 'em home."
"Well, shootin from a public road right-of-way isn't legal, and I sure didn't give you permission to shoot 'em on my land," David continued as he stepped out of his truck. "We better let the game warden sort this out."
One of the threesome got into his truck, and David watched the man carefully. Then David dialed his cell phone for the local warden. Read the rest of the story here, what's your experiences with this?
Wild hogs are pests, but how would the poachers know if there were kids out there playing in the woods? All they had to do was ask the owner first instead of being a-holes and creating a problem.
Or course! /LOL
I have acreage. I stop no hunters.
Years ago on different acrage people took deer and there would always be a haunch on my doorstep.
No more.
I grew up on the small family ranch in SW Texas, and remember my uncles chasing down poachers at night, because they not only helped themselves to the deer, but had “poached” a goat from the pasture more than once.
I suppose things are different in every county, depending on how much damage poachers have caused-in this county, they have shot people’s cattle, goats and even a llama. There are no big rich ranchers close-people have small places, grow and raise livestock for our own use, sale and barter-no one can afford to have people illegally hunting anything nearby-most people butcher and eat the wild hogs they shoot on their property, too-it is good lean pork, especially smoked...
Wild hogs are a plague and this owner knows it......
With that being said, I guess if I were this property owner I'd likely be pissed off too. But if the hunters had come up to my door and asked to hunt the hogs on my property, I'd have let them..........
Who knows, maybe the landowner hunts the hogs himself and feels the poachers have taken away his rightful game..........
What a conundrum.........
That sentence has within it the answer to the problem.
Or maybe the reason for the problem.
Those who have owned land all their lives or raised in the country would have handled it differently.
When the hogs get in this guys precious asparagus, he will wish he had handled it differently.
You're probably right but as a hunter, a property owner's rights trump any hunter's whose game ends up on private property. That's pretty much the law of the land.
If you were a conscientious hunter, you would have gone to the property owner's house and asked permission to retrieve your shot game.........
The fact that these shooters didn't is likely what pissed off the property owner and in this case, I stand with him.
Guess my first comment here was not well written.
The point was wild hogs suck, and someone shooting wild hogs on the edge of my buddy’s ranch well away from livestock would be OK with us.
That said, poachers who enter the ranch (besides a few feet off the road) without permission or endanger livestock are scum and deserve what they get.
Oh yeah, and forget about it if they endanger his home or family. That’s just a death sentence.
So is it ok for strangers to walk through your front door and go to the kitchen and take your Snickers? Sugar is bad for you anyway. You must not have a problem with that. I know what you mean but hope you see my point. I hate strangers on my land for any reason.
Agreed, cowboy.
“Is that a euphemism? “
Ginseng and Bluestar. Money.
“But one time I found a deer stand from someone who didnât have permission. I shat in it.”
I found a guy in a tree stand on some of my property in in Cheatham county and suggested to him that he move on which he did with some haste as I was armed at the time. A while later I was in this very well built tree stand when a guy on the next ridge over cracked off a couple of rounds at me which I returned. I looked like a 200 pound monkey coming down that tree. There were a lot of hostile people in them woods.
I always tell trespassers when I catch them,”If you want to enjoy the benefits of owning land then go buy some.”I had one jerk even threaten to shoot me but he calmed down when I showed him I was armed.(Heavily)
My sister has had this problem, trespassers hunting deer. They insist that they’ve been hunting that land all of their lives. She reminds them that the deed is in her name, and that there are no trespassing signs. They usually leave for the season, but they keep going into her property every year seeing if she’ll enforce her property rights. Her complaint is that the dogs they hunt with, there are a certain percentage who come to her house and don’t leave.
.
Couple of years ago, we had bear hunters shooting through the property. When I flagged one down on the road he told me there were no houses in the area.
That’s the problem with 90% of hunters; they just assume what they don’t know, and didn’t check out.
Our house has never been hit,mainly because it’s 500 yards from the nearest woods.A couple of our neighbors have not been so lucky.I had a couple of jokers rabbit hunting within 25 yards of our house a couple years ago.They took a shot at one and I came boiling out of our house with a HK 91.They left a hell of a lot quicker than they came.
“I worried about that situation a long time,” David said later. “Those guys were fined heavily and had their guns confiscated, and almost lost their truck. They know who I am, where I live, and I didn’t know what they might do to me or my family or farm if they wanted revenge. I lost a lot of sleep about that, but what else could I do? When you catch poachers red-handed you’ve got to throw the book at ‘em, or they’ll own you and your property.”
This newcomer to the area, with lots of bucks, had no clue to the local mores. He could have made friends for life by giving a warning, or telling the men that they could hunt with permission on his land, or a number of other things.
Instead, he made himself out to be a jerk, and made enemies for life.
Wild Hogs are considered pests in most places with no limits.
I have seen this kind of high-handedness in city dwellers who move to the country, a lot. It costs them a lot of good will.
They most likely like eat deer as much as horns.
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