Hunter harrassment

Has anyone gotten someone busted for this?

I am planning ahead for the fall and our friendly neighbor who will probably wait to fence his newly acquired 30 acres during deer season.

And the person who puts stuff out on my other plot.......

You'll have to find something better than building a fence during deer season to claim harrassment

Really ??
A guy building a fence on his own property at any given time of year is not harassment
As stated above “you’ll have to do better than that”

Just curious how many times you’ve claimed the animals as your deer or suggested the neighbors only harvest certain age class deer. You sound like a doozy of a neighbor, the kind that gives hunters a bad name and keep us from getting permission to hunt folks property. Who in their right mind would give out permission to hunt when you have people calling the law on you for building a fence when it’s not a thousand degrees outside.

100% guarantee that if I had to fence some new property, I'd do it during the winter due to bugs, snakes, and heat.

If it happened to be hunting season too, so be it. Best advice I could give would be don't hunt close to my line where/while I'm working.

Yeah, guess i wasn't supposed to walk those wheat fields or ride over fields pulling soil samples after 10/15?

Why dont you help him build it so it will take half as long

You’d make a fine neighbor 300gr!

That would certainly take less time and cost less than a court case. Might also build a lasting relationship with a neighbor which could be beneficial in the future. Or you could do the other thing where both neighbors end up wasting a bunch of time and money and ended up hating each other all because a man decided to do some work on his own property when he felt it best suited him. One question: Do you ever at any point see yourself consulting your neighbor as to when it would be most convenient to him for you to do a project on your property?

Think lockjaw has already had trouble with his neighbor before this potential fence build - he got partial pic of somebody putting something out in his plot and he stopped seeing deer last year

Not sure how a buddy - buddy fence build will go - but being nice like that is great and all - but he may hav a problem

Put up lot of cameras

I have been down this road many times when I had a couple of leases inside the city limits. My advise is stay on your side of the fence and walk the line with game laws. That being said… if the jackass next door wants to be a jackass then dont give him any rope. He has no business on your side of the fence EVER. Throw the book at him.

I had a lady caught harassing me dead to rights. The warden took me to her house and proceeded to tell her how she was in violation of a game law. I was asked if i wanted to prosecute and I declined looking her right in the eye. I told her if she ever did it again I would not be so kind.

As for what he put out on your plot it was probably moth balls. They melt when it rains and will run deer out of the country for a long time.

It would be nice if you asked some questions before just teeing off on me. Not that I am thin skinned but a few of the guys here have seen what I have posted and understand the neighbor in question is a D-bag. He is crossing property he doesn't yet own and running up and down our road too. All this activity has run two bucks off the field I have a camera on. I want to stress we have never done anything to this guy. He is just one of those people.

It looks like the Timber co was wise and gave us a buffer and didn't sell him property right up to the road, so that is a good thing, but unfortunately, he is very close to one of our fields. I am going to post the road coming out of the green field we are losing, and then if he goes past the posted sign, we can take appropriate steps.

I have been in 4 different deer clubs. 2 where people had access rights thru the club ( which sux ), one where we had a club that was next to us that road hunted our lease and we couldn't keep mud riders out of, and now this one. It seems like most all clubs struggle with keeping people off their lease, and we are no different. And it is made worse by people who tend to think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want.. Which is an accurate description of this guy.

I would not ever knowingly be over on somone elses property. That is just not my deal. I hate people being over on me, so I don't do that to others.

And no, I have no desire to help this guy. When you treat me right, I will. When you don't. I won't.

We had our neighbor arrested for poaching about 15 years ago. He no longer hunts but his two sons do. They are both kind and respectful. Honestly I have no idea what they do on their property, and I know they stay off ours.

“ It would be nice if you asked some questions before just teeing off on me.”

You might want to lower your expectations a little.

Probably should have gave a little more info in the first post. Everybody got their perception of the situation from that first post. I didnt read all the posts but i know a few felt you were being unreasonable. Might have explained the situation a little better to begin with. We made the best accessment we could with the information we had.

I'd sure hate to be on bad terms with any neighbor I had... A bad neighbor can sure make life hard on ya. Sometimes offering a lil help to a fella will go a long ways.. Hope it gets better for ya

Even if all this is true it doesnt negate the fact the guy can build a fence on his property any time he wants and theres nothing you can do about it other than piss and moan
You could as some have suggested Help him with the task to be neighborly

My Grandpaw told me the only way you can control what happens on another mans land is to buy it, and be bought every 40 that touched him when it came up for sale.

Do you lease the land you're on, or do you own it?

When you use the terms..."losing" land.... you don't own it.

I'm asking the OP if he owns the land he's hunting on. I didn't see anything about losing land. I just know I have people leasing land beside me (land i own) who try and tell me what I should shoot and so forth. I know nothing about his situation. If the guy has to drive through the lease to get to the 30 acres its always gonna be a problem.

We lease it. The long and short of it is dude buys acreage with a house on it. Decides to build a new house close to the property line, which is close to our biggest greenfield, which has been there over 20 years. Dude trespasses to see green field, and again to come talk to me about position of shooting house. I tell him we will likely move it. We do. Not good enough. Dude calls landowner and fusses about greenfield. They come out, measure everything and tell him to pound sand. Not good enough. Dude parks all his vehicles along property line, hoping i am sure we will punch a bullet hole or two in them.

Next season he inquires about purchasing the property. Then does nothing. Every single time I go to sit in shooting house, within about 30 minutes heavy equipment cranks up. Doesn't matter day or time, it always happens..... Then in spring I go out to plant and he comes over again and tells me he is buying it. Which wasn't true yet. While going thru the process, he came over and bush hogged our field, and has been driving up and down our road inside our club, and off the property he is supposedly buying.

based on his behavior, I feel comfortable labeling him a douche, and fully expect since his new corner will be very close to another green field of ours, he will do all sorts of crap to disrupt that field. All this traffic has run off 2 bucks that have been feeding in this field.

So obviously, becase he has no respect for us, much less property boundaries, I wanted to see if others have encountered anything similar and what hunter harrassment would need to look like.

As long as who you lease from has your back id give it right back to him. He'll be ready to sell out by next year!

I'd tread lightly on bullet holes in the vehicles talk. Neighborly disputes can get ugly and you don't wanna give the guy any ammo(no pun intended)

Have you called a local game warden and taken him out there and explained the situation to them to get their input?

curb stomp his fkn azz and be done with it. Some folks don't understand anything else.

I have talked to one of them and told him he was giving us trouble. But the problem right now is I don't have a clear pic of the guy over on us. I added another camera to see if I can get a better one, and am thinking about putting up a no trespassing sign on the road out of the green field and a camera there too, to see if he goes around it, which I feel certain he will. I have a pic of him in a UTV. Not clear enough to identify him yet. Make sense? So the only thing I really have is him crossing a green field that still belongs to us, using the road out of it onto our lease, which until it closes is still ours.


The bullet holes comment is what I felt like he was hoping would happen. We would shoot a deer, and the bullet pass through completely, and then hit one of his vehicles. Why else would he park them there all deer season? No one in our club would ever shoot towards a house or vehicle. In fact I passed on a deer that direction when I was sitting there with my 450 Bushmaster, just for that reason.

Our club is a great club. We have a couple law enforcement guys in it, however, this isn't their jurisdiction. We all follow the rules, I gave the other game warden the gate code last year, so we have nothing to hide. You get caught breaking the rules, you get a warning, you keep doing it, you are history.

So the issue is really more of having to get a persons attention who basically believes he can do whatever he wants out there. My understanding is the lease holder is aware we will trespass him. It's just a matter of catching him. I feel certain even if we put a sign up posting the road, he will go around it, which I believe if I have a clear picture is enough to have a warrant issued in alabama.

Paint your property line with purple paint and if you catch him on you again prosecute him for criminal trespass (if the new law has any teeth to it)

Is your name actually on the lease or is it a hunting club with the President’s name on the lease? This matters if you’re calling the Sheriff or Game Warden. Mark the lines, hang cams, handle accordingly. Good luck.

Be careful rocking the boat too much as far as bitching and moaning to the timber company. They don’t make much money on hunting leases, they make their money selling timber and property. If a lease becomes a problem child for them they’ll cut it loose. Oftentimes to the people that are causing the problem in the first place. It’s happened before and will happen again.

Best and most accurate info yet.

Yep. Dude has you by the balls because he owns his property, you are an expendable peon (in the eyes of the law and him) that only has a yearly lease fee at stake. No one is going to care that you've been (or your president has been) a 20 year leasor, just being honest.

I wouldn't do much else except for hunt it like normal, stay way away from this guy, put some cell cams up on the roads, and move on. If you are shooting directly at his possessions and property line you probably need to change that ASAP.

This is coming from someone who's also had a house built right next to a long-standing greenfield. I still hunt it, but it completely changed the game for me and I just had to adjust. Y'all might even consider just moving the shooting house and letting the field grow up if you are truly interested in keeping the lease and not just going to war with your neighbor who's decided he's going to be an ass.

I think they know the guy is a problem. I was in a club like that before, where a landowner had acess through the property, and was a troublemaker. It got them a lower lease rate. But it was a problem, and the manager of the club was a dummy and put in an unauthorized green field basically on the property line, then sent pics of the adjacent landowner in the field to the timber co, and got blasted about it. Was told we couldn't even hunt the green field......... In fact I caught one of them trespassing hunting rabbits with dogs during bow season and confronted him and told he to get off the property.

The land is leased by one of the board members. That is usually how they do them. So its not a club lease, its a board member, however I am on the board and supposedly they have that info as well. I don't want to fuss at the timber co, but they ought to be giving us a commission for getting them big money for 30 acres. I would think they would appreciate us pissing the guy off more, so maybe he will buy more of it.. know what I mean? That's what I would say to them if I talked to them. And I really think they will support us, they have already approved the area we selected to replace the greenfield.

It sounds like you are getting pretty close to the timber company telling your club that they are establishing a new "bow only" buffer zone within a few hundred yards of that property line. It's becoming very common on leases near a home, if they will lease hunting rights at all. The liability of you having a shooting house and green field facing this guy's house when he has already complained about it is a much bigger priority to the company than your hunting preferences. You won't win this fight in the long run. If the changes on the bordering property is running deer off the field, then adjust and go where the deer are, not where they used to be back when you had the free benefit of the bordering property being bedding area to funnel deer to the plot.

Threads like this make me so proud I don’t have to hunt in a lease although I do have to deal with neighbors. I’ve worked hard my entire life to keep relationships with adjoining landowners in a good way and develop partnerships with them and the few new ones who’ve come along. I have one problem guy who I have to keep and eye on hunting on the line but other than him it’s a phone call and it’s handled. And If that little 52 problem acres ever goes up for sale I’ll buy it.

I agree if I owned it . Having to kll or die over leased land I don't know . Guess it depended on how I felt that day

Legally there’s probably not going to be a lot you can do

Read that again slowly

I wish I had some acreage somewhere. Maybe one of these days.

Makes me not feel so bad that I rarely even hunt anymore.

Well I posted the road, so there is no way he doesn't know we don't want him on our side, and there seems to be a "hiccup" as far as the sale goes. If it falls thru, definitely going after hunter harassement for cutting our field.

I don’t think bush hogging a field is considered hunter harassment. He actually has to be willfully harassing you while you are hunting.

When I got pics of people on a green field last year and gave them to the game warden, prior to bow season starting, he said if I had the guys face in the pic, he could take care of it.

So maybe its not hunter harassment, but he definitely had something in mind for him.

There is an additional part to the statute.

§ 9-11-271. Activities prohibited.

Activities prohibited by this article shall include, but not be limited to the following:

(a) Creating a visual, aural, olfactory, or physical stimulus intended to affect the natural behavior of the wild animal being hunted or fish for the purpose of fishing.

(b) Affecting the condition or location of personal property intended for use in the hunting or fishing.

You got pictures of "people" on the green field....but you do not even know for sure who it is. Why blame the neighbor?

Completely wipe your brain of the hunter harassment theory. Good way to catch a civil lawsuit for malicious prosecution

In this case, because the club has previous experience with the neighbor. I didnt' have a pic of the guys face, so... it was a guess. But did have a pic of neighbors son and grandson walking down our creek with shotguns the year prior and we know who the son is. The game warden checked into it and had concerns about the club across the creek, but I communicate with them, so I don't get a sense they are that way. That's why he wouldn't do anything without a pic of the persons face. In this case, it was 2 people, but the other person was across the field, so he was only caught on camera because of the headless guy.

I did let the club on other side of the creek know I had a guy on camera putting stuff on one of my fields and had the game warden looking into it. So if nothing happens this year, then maybe it was them. All I know is I had bascially daily pic's of deer using the field until these two guys put something on it. Then it stopped for a good while.

I would listen to Ant about this "hunter harassment" stuff.

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I have always considered the hunter harassment situation to be where you have some anti-hunter nut jobs showing up at your hunting property
with bullhorns, picket signs, screaming and hollering at the hunter, etc. That sort of thing. It is certainly not a neighbor doing whatever they want to do on their own
property - unless they are banging pots and pans at dusk and dawn such that it is clearly aimed at disturbing a next door neighbor hunting.

^^^agree with this. If you don't let "harassment" go, you're gonna have a bitter season, always worrying if "he's" crossed the line today.

and line crossing is trespass not harassment.

I would let the game warden deal with the charge, if any, and trespass them. He didn't tell me last year what he would have charged the guy with. The son and grandson would have gotten a hunting without a permit ticket I am sure.

This guy or members of his family burned down one of our shooting houses before I got in the club. I was like, I know how to fix that. Put a ladder stand up there with a dummy in it and a bunch of camera's around it. It won't take long.......

Yep thats what I would do also. First I would fill all his vehicles with drain holes. All kiddin aside just find another place to hunt. If I had to deal with crap like that I would quit hunting altogether. It can't be any fun dealing with drama while trying to hunt and relax. Thats the reason I hunt public land 90% of the time, get back in there away from everybody and enjoy the woods. To hell with what everybody else is doing.