I got the following email from our club president today. Pisses me off because we have over 7 years there and a ton of improvements that are now for naught. If I have my way there will be no 100 yard Range left when I leave. I built it and I'll be danged if I am going to leave it.


Gents,



I hope all is going well with you. We have a few things to discuss of importance.



First of all, I went to the post office today to pick up a certified letter. It was from Westervelt. A scanned copy is attached. Let me say from the start that I had no idea this was coming, but when our lease ends 5/31/14, they aren’t renewing it, at least where it is today. A dog hunting club wants to lease 30,000 acres, so they are getting our present lease. The guy who wrote the letter said that if we would like to move, they’ll make it happen should an area in Bay or Calhoun County become available.



So, we have until 5/31/14 to:



a. Remove all hunting gear, including stands, ladders, feeders, cables, equipment, etc.

b. Remove all BUILDINGS, including Scottie Ray’s

c. Remove all trailers, cans, boxes, materials

d. Fill in the water hole

e. Fill in the fire pit

f. Remove the shooting bench, and clean up the range.

All turkeys must die then!

WTF!!! Now how do they know for a fact it is a DOG club???? I swear we can't win for loosing... Man, I hate you are loosing your club especially after that long. Maybe they will change there minds.

Sounds like some Westervelt employees like to dog hunt. A prime example about working to try and have a "trophy" club and to only shoot the big ones and save the smaller ones for 3 or 4 years down the road, only have something happen to the land you have no control over, thus it's just urine down the drain. Join the dog club and slip out to your favorite stands.

WE were told by Westervelt that in alabama they do not allow dog deer hunting. Its says so in a friend of mines contract.

Hey, maybe it's a pitbull club. Feel better?

Just kidding Jtapia. That sucks man.

Yep, that sux alright. About 3 yrs ago we lost some really good land after about 16yrs. The fellers there were all like family. It was like a second home.

The accompanying pdf attachment was an image of the Westervelt letter. It specifically said that our area was to become part of a 30,000 acre Dog hunt club that had negotiated with them and it was strictly a "business decision" and they would be happy to relocate us in some of the upcoming vacancies if we felt that would be a direction we wanted to follow.

I don't mind it being a dog hunt club as much as I mind them cancelling our lease after we worked so closely with them when we improved the property. Untold thousands of dollars invested in that place.

Sounds dang sorry to take something from an existing lease holder.... Guess they are getting the family deal....or raising the ante....

Atleast I'd feel safe there!!

Pouring all that money into a lease is crazy to me.

I got one of those letters several years ago from Champion Paper notifying me they were selling our lease to Forever Wild. I was "graciously" given two weeks to remove everything from our lease. I received the letter on October 7th and that was the one week before opening day of bow season. I called and was told we were out of there and would not be reimbursed for the fields we had planted. I told the man from Champion (A Mister Whitehorse or Whitehouse) I would be there that weekend to plow all the fields up and leave them like they were when I leased it. He told me we would be ticketed if we plowed the fields up and I told him meet me at the gate with the ticket book. I hung up and he called me back about an hour later and told me we had a month to hunt the land and the lease would run out Thanksgiving Weekend. I have never been back to the lease and don't plan to. I killed a lot of good deer off of that tract and treated it like my own. I also offered to buy this tract several times and was told it would never be sold. I feel your pain.

well when you call them out there and discuss what they would consider the Ideal lessee and then do what their biologist asked us to do and then some. Do everything by the book and run a good clean trophy club you should have the reasonable expectation that your renewal is automatic as long as we want to be there. We got approval and built roads and a bridge and had community food plots maintained year round that nobody hunted, we were the ideal costumer. That didn't matter though I guess someone offered a dollar an acre more than we were giving.

Did they not offer you a counter bid??

Oddly enough, this area used to be owned by Champion !

Naw. The email is all I any of us got from the club president and the letter they sent him was all he got.
We were scheduled to elect a new president and council of five on the 19th. Our president only serves a year and nothing goes through except through our council of five.

Sure hate to hear that.I know you gotta be pissed!Thats why i dont dump a pile of money in any lease i got.We keep the roads clean,plant food plots and hunt.We are not a "trophy"club but more of a just have fun club.If your happy im happy kinda deal.We dont shoot but just a few does..well actually the kids shoot the does..and they might shoot a couple bucks a season.Hell I've had the land leased for bout 4 yrs now and i dont think I've ever even killed a deer over there.When i leased it i leased it more for the kids than anyone else and to see their faces when they shoot something over there..well it makes it all worth it.Good luck to yall finding more land and i would tell westervelt to lick my balls.Check out www.resourcemgt.com and see if they got anything available in your area.They should start putting up available leases around july.

I would call them myself and get to the bottom of it first hand. Hate it for ya though.

i wouldnt be surprised to see westervelt lodge #2 pop up there. it would be a really good plan, "hey guys instead of spending company money to get this place like we want it we can let some poor sapsucker do the work for us and make money off of them and yank the lease out from under them after deer season to ensure they dont go on a were losing the lease killing spree" they will probably be booking hunts in a few months

If they do, then that is a sorry company..

Bummer. Hate that for y'all, Tapia.

That's the exactly the kind of stuff the company I work for would do.

I thought the current leasee has first dibs on renewing the lease??
Westervelt leased to dog clubs in 2011/12 season bc we leased it the next year....let me tell u how awesome that was

One of the reasons I've never liked dealing with Westervelt. They love to do this sort of thing.

Seems like if money is the issue, then they'd give you a chance to bid higher. If it was my bridge, I'd tannerite it on the way out!

Ding ding ding!! We have a winner. Sorry you're going through it but you head the nail on the head. At the end of day they let you make ALL the ideal improvements then pulled it from you for more money. That's my guess anyway.

That sucks man. I hate it for you. I have not heard many positive comments on how they treat thier customers.

Maybe you can destroy anything of value you added to the lease before they benefit from an extra $0.75 per acre and kick y'all to the curb.

Sounds like everyone needs to be aware ... Westervelt will screw you, so use thier resource up and don't add anything extra to your leased property. They disrespect thier customers

Hate to hear this. i wouldnt lease from anyone that would pull my lease to give it to someone else.

Man hate to hear that.We lost a 1000 acres to Peavey last year, got outbid by 8grand...

Thanks for the support guys. I think I'll take Daniel Whites advice and contact Bill Baker myself.

These guys have been straight up with us for the entire length of our time there.
The club I was in before this one leased the same area and has alot of the same members. Our "President took all of out money paid to him for our lease payment and splurged on himself. We had quite the surprise opening day when we were met at the gate by Westervelt and GW telling us that we were trespassing because we had no lease due to non payment.

Bill Baker worked with us and we were able to lease the same area for $1.00 and acre that year. So we quickly formed this club and have operated as the current club ever since. They treated us good up until now.

Needless to say they'll get no recommendations from me after this.

They (Westervelt) offered to swap our 1500 acre lease in Bibb Co. for a 1000 lease in Pickens Co. about 4 years into our lease. We declined. Oddly enough this was the season after we took 4 130"+ deer off the property.

Don't put anything past them. I have learned that from pure experience with them.

They want us to "clean up the range area"....I'll do just that LOL They'll have a 100 yard swath of empty dirt when I am through. I'll use the back stop to fill in our water hole we dug, at their suggestion, and I may just take a chainsaw to the bridge. It aint much, just something to get a 4 wheeler across a small creek behind the camp area.

I am just glad that we decided to not install a septic system like they wanted us to do last year. We just used portable storage tanks and carried them out when we left and emptied them at work.

Where is the club land located? Gotta be NE or E of PC.

Yes, east of PC

Their relocation options are NE of PC in northern Bay County and Calhoun County

Don't let westervelt know about the big bucks you kill either. I have had more than one person tell me that they have lost leases due to big bucks. I was in a club a while back that didn't report accurate weights or antler sizes because they were afraid westervelt would up their lease or take it.

In this case, I would definitely burn my bridges. Pardon the pun. I would also burn anything else before leaving it for someone else to have.

Bill Baker Never had a good experience with that guy! They do what they want and do buddy/cousin/employee deals all the time. I knew of an employee there that had thousands of acres he was getting at half what anyone else would pay.

^^^This^^^

Damn, 2 years ago I sat out there and showed Bill Baker several 110-130 class 10 pointers that I had on trailcam

I've called him twice now this morning and have yet to receive a call back yet. We'll see if he is as willing to work with us as he has been in the past.

Am i missing something? who can afford a 30000 acre lease? is dog hunting really that fun? don't get me wrong i've always wanted to try it but,that seems like a lot of coin! how many members can dog hunt on 30K acres? what would the lease cost?

1000 members for 30,000 acre is about the normal for deer dog hunters! So at 350 dollars a man they could also plant greenfeilds and make daily liquor store runs!

we were paying $5.10 per acre.
Unless they got a great deal by leasing areas that were previously unleasable or just unleased I dont know.

But to put it another way, I am sure we aren't the only club displaced by this. We only had 2800 acres in our club so there has to be other. Now all of this land had clubs that by Westervelt rules, were 6 point or better clubs. All of this land taken care of to produce bigger bucks with low kill rates in the effort to grow those big bucks... well that equals some mighty fine hunting land with some mighty fine bucks. I'd say top dollar could be attracted or as mentioned here, family or employee discount.

From what I understand, westervelt and several other land owners had a bunch of land that has not been leased in a couple of seasons. There was already a 20k dog hunt club in the area. They offered all the land owners to lease everything but they had to get it all so they wouldn't have to worry about disrupting/complaints from a hold out club. Looks like a business decision.

if they had problems getting clubs to lease more land then mabe they should drop the price. We had an additional 2500 acres we leased but let it go after they allowed the dog hunt club that you mentioned to lease right ontop of us. We couldn't fill areas with still hunters in that area so we let it go. We asked for discounted rates to keep it but we were refused. We also tried gaining several other sections that had sat Idle for a few years, but westervelt refused to lower price so we could afford them.

There is also another 40,000 acre dog hunting club just west of the county line that a friend of mine was a member. There isn't a lack of dog hunt areas in this particular plat of land.
It may be a business decision but it is a bad business practice to boot out long standing paying customers who took care of their land and offered to expand and help their empty areas. Mabe if they would treat folks like us better then they would not have to rely on the dog hunters to lease these large tracks.
It should also be noted that until about 15 years ago this whole area was dog hunt area and it was shut down because of all the tree damage that the various clubs caused including a huge fire started by rival clubs over disputed land. The land owner then shut out all dog hunting and that is when westervelt took over nd started leasing for the landowner.

Received no call back from Bill Baker yesterday. That is the first time ever tat he has not returned a phone call from me.

I called again about an hour ago, straight to VM, left another message. We'll see.

I'm guessing you aren't going to get anywhere with him...you might as well take advantage if you do get the opportunity to talk with him to let him know what POS he is...

Fixed it for you.

I really hate to hear that has happened to yall. [s][/s]My only advice would be on your next lease have one person stay in contact with the person over the lease on a biweekly basis. Changing club Presidents every year is ok but one person preferably the lease holder should work at building a relationship with those overseeing your lease. This has worked for my family as we have leased the same tract for over 40 years. Because of these relationships built we have been given a heads up a few times when someone was trying to get our lease out from under us. I hope this advice helps on your next lease.

the whole concept of our club was to avoid the common complaints that we all brought into the club forming meeting. The main complaint, and one I have seen echoed here many times, is the Nazi president who plays favorites and is on some kind of power trip.
We decided that no one person will be in charge but that the president would represent the club in all legal matters including him/her being the lease signer. We then have a council of Five which is the rule making committee and problem solver/ oddly we have no rules except for Westervelt rules and common sense rules. The only official rule the club has relates to the Shooting Range and deals with the safety aspect of the members whose areas border the backstop.

When you join the club you pick your area, each area is 150 acres min) and you are free to do with it as you please but are encouraged to improve it with supplemental feeding either by feeders or plots or both.

I will however mention to the guys that mabe we should consider having a single person keep in contact with our next lessor to develop that personal relationship.

JTapia,

The one person is the key for building the long term relationship as far as how yall run the day to operations ie rotating presidents is not a problem at all, but I would suggest that the one person be the one you trust the most.

I have no history dealing with a paper company. I do however have several freinds that have had problems with Westervelt. The biggest issue that can hurt you is being honest on your harvest log. If you log that you killed 5 mature or 5 real trophy bucks, your asking for an increase. As much as I hate to lie, it is in your best interest to fudge a little.

Man I hate to hear that. I know it sucks

I would have a hard time keeping myself from hooking up to my sprayer and doing some weed control for them(Pramitol). It will kill the weeds in the field and leave the ground sterile for up to 2 years. Don't get caught doing it though cause that might be a big lawsuit.

We had one pulled that the club had for 14 years in Marion junction. A lawyer from bham owned it but decided to let a banker from Selma handle it for him and that is when the problems started. The president was called and reemed out because pine beetles had killed some timber and we didn't notify the owner. The pres told him we were hunting it didn't realize we were suppose to be managing the timber for him. The banker told him that the following year it would be bid out and we knew we couldn't compete so we went postal on the deer we had been managing for the last 6 years. We would normally kill around 30 deer a year about half and half. That year we killed over 60 off 1700 acres and I think 17 of them were spikes but did kill 3 nice 10 pts that year which made it suck that our management plan was really kicking in. That kind of crap really ticks you off when you do your best to do something and get your lease pulled for total bs.

Oh man I can feel my anger in your words!

This came out of the blue after the season ended.
I have left 3 VM over 2 days for Bill Baker and have not had a response from him yet.

I agree, we were just starting to see the fruits of our management coming to bare and now the Hounds will surely run these into a shooting lane this upcoming season. Given the notice or even the hint that we were going to lose the lease and there would have been no deer that would be given a pass thinking he'll be bigger next year.

I try to remain a christian man had have christian thoughts but I am only a man in the flesh so it is hard.