Thinking About Banning Hunting on my Land

I am thinking about banning hunting on my land.

I have always allowed some measure of hunting, figuring they were not my animals anyway, and it is not like animals know where property lines are, or even care if they did. I kept the number limited for safety reasons, but it was a good neighborly thing to do, and because some people are not blessed with any land to hunt on. But lately it seems as if the hunters are the ones who do not care.

We have had our share of bad hunters over the years. We have some drive through our fences, beat up my uncle almost to the point of death when he refused to let a group to hunt on him, had hunters kick me off my own land not knowing who the rightful owner was, etc.

This year I let a guy hunt on me, and he was fine with that until I found a skidder so I could do some logging. My trucker drops the skidder off, and an hour later my wife gets a text..."are you guys going to do some logging?" We inform him that we have to, property taxes are due. Then the next time I see him, he is sideways mad, saying how he pulled his hunting stands and "moved to a place he had control over." I explain to him that logging does not hurt hunting, the deer are still right there, I watch them every day because I am feeding them essentially. He disagrees, and ultimately gets all pissy-pants like some 8 year old would, not even listening to reasoning.

Then last year my neighbor asked if he could hunt on me because "that is where the deer are coming out." He is a good neighbor, so I told him he could, but then he starts in on how dumb I was to get swindled by a logger. This hunter would have done this, done that, and goes on and on about how that would never happen to him. I almost said, "why don't you hunt on your own land then." He really should, he has 400 acres which is not a lot, but still plenty to find some deer on, why does he have to hunt on me? If he sucks so bad at hunting he cannot get them on his own land, then surely more land to hunt on is not going to help.

I have nothing against hunting, but it rather irks me that hunters do not seem to understand we pay thousands of dollars a year in property taxes, and the land was not cheap to buy in the first place. There is nothing FREE about the land they hunt on for FREE, so why do they make me always feel like the bad guy when I "ruin" their hunting by working on my farm?

I think I am done with hunters.

TOTALLY.
How dare they complain! Or charge them to cover your taxes!

I don't understand how it continued past the violent incident with your uncle.

You seem to have some unpleasant neighbors, so if you ban hunting, expect them to come on your land to hunt anyway.  In which case, call the Game Warden and report poachers.  The neighbors might hate you more after that, but they seem to just be looking for any excuse to be mad at you anyway.

https://www.maine.gov/ifw/warden-service/

We only have 40 acres but it’s the wildest 40 acres around. We seem to support about a dozen deer (obviously they go all over) which we do not hunt, preferring to think of them as a food reserve for hard times. We have a perfect excuse to deny all hunting requests: two working oil wells and an injection well on the property, plus some supporting infrastructure. The oil rights holders purely HATE bullets in their infrastructure and the risk of fire or spill resulting, though low, is a socially-sufficient excuse.

Of course, some of the neighbors do hunt and they probably trespass. Hard to control that. Funny story though: one neighbor is scared to trespass after this story he tells on himself. His facesaving BS is that he shot the deer on his side of the fence and “tracked it wounded” across our property all the way to the family cemetery on the back corner. (A literal Indian graveyard...). There the blood trail vanished. So did the deer. He decided the spirits of Mary’s ancestors were protecting the deer so he got scared, gave up, and went home!

Around here people have been known to lease hunting land out.  They get access to a 40 for a grand or two.  Then you can get (hopefully) respectful hunters who are looking to value your land.  Then you can use that as an excuse for not allowing free hunting from the neighbors.  Not sure if it would work but maybe it's an option.  Keeping the tresspassers away would probably still be your responsibility since a leaser wouldn't expect to have to kick people off for you.  

Heck, lease the whole farm and have a spare house for them to stay in.  Maybe a group of guys and gals from the city would come up?

I've given a lot of things for free over the years.  The problem is, people see the 'free' and think that it means 'worthless' and act accordingly.

Massively disrespectful.

Maybe it's time to charge for the use of your land?  Draw up a contract that lists your rights and responsibilities and theirs.  Even if it's just a small amount of money, having money helps people see the value.  

Travis,

I have been fascinated with the split between the ethical hunters and the unethical ones. There seem to be more unethical hunters than before in my opinion. this could be just from the "convenience culture" when you go to the woods to get deer and go to the grocery to get twinkies, but it is pronounced. We always viewed hunting as an independent skill requiring all the senses and talents that the natives here would have required, but with upgraded range and accuracy.

The younger hunters have been sold on Cabela's, with baits and prefab blinds and so on. This shows in how hunters treat the locations they hunt. I have seen degradation from deer hunters which is sad. Skeletons hissing the head indicating someone just took the antlers. The price of hunting licenses has gone up in many states to pay for added enforcement because hunters are being dirtbags. I turned a neighbor in for poaching and got threatened for it, but there is a reason the season is when it is- cool enough to not spoil the meat and before the bred does are massively pregnant.

If you can, I would populate your property with ethical hunters. If you can make some money on it great, but its like having blacksnakes around here, they keep the copperheads out. I say that after my son stepped on a copperhead last week out deer hunting! If your problem neighbors know there is someone sneaking around out there they will think twice. Make sure these guys know you have given written permission to x number of people (they don't have to exist).

I caught the neighbor poaching when I was scouting. I got his mug on a game camera on my property with a rifle at night out of season. He ended up moving a month ago. The new people are nice!  Game cameras are now pretty cheap (getting to ~$20 after hunting season) and its another thing to make sure people in town know you are installing. This guy was using night vision and an IR light, so I used a baby monitor and could see him out there from way off.  

unfortunately you have a conundrum with hunters/neighbors.
you might do best by going cold turkey an put a holting stop to all hunting and trespassing on your land either that or only allowing the biggest badest hunter in your neighborhood permission
it truely is a conundrum.
before i bought property i wrote in on the contact that it would be void and null if previous property owner had given permission, written or verbal, to anyone to anything on the land. Hunting, gathering firewood, 4 wheeling, driving across to access adjoining land, anything at all. and then investigated it with adjoining property owners.
well turned out that trespassers stole ginseng off my mountain this year when i was sick. they came in from down river which is state land.

Sorry to hear about the unpleasantness, Travis. I think I agree with Mike in terms of approach, though.

Would charges of tresspass hold up if you banned it outright? Because I think I wouldn't ban it, but rather charge enough to cover any hassle hunters cause. Plus, you could get the land use agreement on paper, where you could list your stipulations, and the consequences for breaking them.

I think that the rental idea is a great one, too. I mean, american plan-style accomodation, where you're essentially providing meals and cleaning like it's a hotel, is a lot of work, so you might want to avoid that, but such formality and spelled-out consequences will probably drive off undesirables, and some kind of return on it for you returns their surplus to you. You're third-ethicking them.

I respect your initial position. Many landowners wouldn't be so welcoming, especially for not only a lack of return, but rudeness and damage to infrastructure. I mean, did anyone even ever offer you parts of their kills? It doesn't matter if you are so inclined or not, but to wildcraft or hunt on someone else's land without even that token, permission or not, seems rude to me.

I think, if the idea appeals, that you might want to see if you can assemble a hunt camp vacation package for hunters looking for it. You mention that you have at least one weather-tight structure you aren't using. If the section or sections that you allow them to use are seeded at the right time for deer candy to come ripe for hunting season, you'll have gone above and beyond to augment the hunting experience, and so should have no issues in charging for it.

I don't think I would prohibit it; prohibited things just end up happening anyways, and out of your control. I would just make it a seasonal business, especially if that conferred unto it any legal protections as a source of your income. Why that wouldn't already exist on a farm is beyond me, but in any case, I think profiting from people whom you can select for their ability to revere your property as you need them to will offer you greater control than simply trying to ban it altogether.

I hate that there's the feeling of entitlement on the part of some hunters and that responsible land stewards have to deal with it. I hope you can find an easy and profitable way forward.

-CK

Have you warned them about the (nonexistent) coyote traps? It works!

Gosh, that is some really shit behavior from people feeling entitled to favours from you.

I haven't taken much action to stop people entering my land, as I am not finding any damage being done. I threw up no trespassing signs, and see that they are being ignored in the back areas... but no trash, fires, or torn down signs. If that changes, I will thrown up a really ugly barbwire fence, amd dummy cameras, and real cameras... and let folks know I regret it, but in light of the damage..

I am seeking to avoid being that asshole from away who blocks everything off for no reason.. that doesn't tend to go over well.

I am fortunate, in a sense, that my 200ish acres doesn't abut anything larger than a couple other parcels that size, and all together we are surrounded by road. The large properties with morr forestry/crown land in back, people knock down gates and use heavy equipment to fill trenches, to get access..

I have only given permission to friends, and having them out there hunting and trapping has been a real benefit in terms of keeping an eye on things. They have been here awhile and know everyone... so word has gotten around much faster, that my land is no longer vacant.

It also lets me say, as suggested by others, that I am sorry, but I can't give permits to any more hunters, I'm full up.

I would hope there are some better people to whom you can allow access, which might be a better deterrent than just a blanket ban.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. My dad has had similar issues for a few years and even when we had guys under lease there were issues. We finally found a group of 3 guys that are phenomenal though and very like minded in how to manage and maintain our property and deer herd. We are going to be very accommodating towards keeping them coming back each year.

The entitlement mentality has always mystified me. I just do not get it. In Illinois we have a purple paint law, looks like Maine does as well. Our neighbors to the north were staunch anti-hunters for years and I can tell you the deer knew it. If you cut off your land from others it will in time benefit your neighbors hunting since the deer will be traveling to and from your land. Personally I would have purple paint on trees, rock, or posts every 75-100 feet on the perimeter of my property and have a notification conversation with my neighbors. That would at least provide a degree of due diligence should the sheriff or game warden ever need to be called in.

Also, a contract of some sort for anyone with access is highly recommended. A good contract will protect both parties. At the end of the day though, it's your land and you get to do what you want.

Curious, do you have moose on your land or just deer?

$25 a day, per hunter or $400 for the entire season for a group no larger than 4.  Make them sign a waiver/hunting lease that spells out the terms of their hunting, including the assumption of risk associated with hunting and traveling on your land.  The agreement also covers their responsibility to close any gates they open, pay for any damage they cause, and pack out every bit of trash they might bring onto the property.  Require them to "check in" via text when they arrive and "check out" when they leave.

Cash, up front.

People rarely respect what they do not pay for.  If they don't agree to your terms, bye.

These kinds of hunting leases are increasingly popular.  Search the interwebs and you'll find examples.

All hunting banned on my land.
All the plants and animals are sacred...even the humans. They're a bloodthirsty lot where I live in Europe...they kill anything that moves with the resulting ecological imbalance.
I need my land to be a haven for wildlife, and a place of no fear, love and peace.

Katie and I were thinking about this the other day...

We have a 1 car garage that is attached to the house, and we thought about turning it into a Inlaw Apartment. There is a separate 9x13 room off to the side of it as well, so we thought the small room would make for a great bathroom and closet, while the 13 x 22 main room would make for a nice Inlaw Apartment with Kitchenette.

That would allow us to rent the room out in AirBandB Style for hunters, snowmobilers, or ATV people...or of course the great people on Permies who just want to come out to Maine for a little vacation...reduced rates of course...free if we like you! (LOL)! The way that part of the house is situated on the house, people could go in and out without compromising their privacy or ours.

We do have that other home, but we could actually build the Inlaw Apartment faster and more cheaply, because it is smaller than renovating the entire other house.

Sorry to hear about your bad experiences with hunters. What has worked for me is letting only one Hunter on my land. He does so in exchange for keeping it posted for me as well as helping me with one or two projects a year as an extra set of hands. I interviewed him before giving him permission to make sure our styles and attitudes matched up and to give him the rules (nothing crazy, just stuff like no drinking while hunting, no taking down trees without asking first, etc). So far it works well.
The nice thing with this setup is that he posts it with his number. He deals with the jerks because he has a stake in the land. Most recently one of my neighbors put up a tree stand that looks right onto my upper field. Normally I wouldn't care, but there was an incident where someone using that stand threatened some other neighbors while they were walking in the field... Needless to say, not ok. It was much easier to have the conversation with another educated Hunter around.
Not sure if that would work in your situation, but might be worth considering.

If you choose to ban hunting, you still have the right to grant an exemption from that ban, if you find a hunter who you trust enough to want them there.

I'll admit, my brain got snagged on the "400 acres isn't much" part. I have 10 acres, and more deer than I know what to do with :)

Caleb Mayfield wrote:Curious, do you have moose on your land or just deer?

I have both unfortunately.

The deer do not bother me so bad, because when they come to the sheep fences, they bound over them, whereas the moose plow right through them. They really play havoc on the fences and I have a few that are still down from moose going through them.

Our problem here in Piedmont Virginia is that hunting with dogs is permitted and so we have many (usually) underfed hounds getting our dogs excited, often showing up lost begging food and water, in addition to the actual hunting which endangers a lot of residents in the area as the hunters tend to stay in the road waiting for their dogs to flush the deer.

But... I wanted to mention that we've considered viewing the management of the animals on the land to be a permanent source of food, which means prohibiting all hunting but ours, and taking only as many as the population can sustain. In theory, we're replacing the cougars and wolves which have been removed.

We would become the apex predator, and behave accordingly, to maintain stability in the numbers of deer, turkey, etc.

The stable population size could be artificially increased by planting food crops for them.

This will be far preferable to having hunters around, who behave here as I'm reading about elsewhere in these posts... badly. And the way they treat their dogs... shameful.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I don't understand how it continued past the violent incident with your uncle.

Yeah that was messed up.

My Uncle had a long driveway, and some hunters parked in his driveway blocking him from getting home. So he tooted the horn, but they did not come out of the woods. So he broke off a stock and put it on the back of the seat, and the horn...oh yeah, that got them out of the woods.

They waited for him later that night and with 5 on 1, beat the ever living crap out of him, almost to death. It was so bad that when my Aunt got home, she thought he had killed and gutted a deer on the porch.

So the police came, and they took us aside and told us that in cases like this, their hands were tied, but would look the other way if we dealt with it.

So the next day everyone knew what happened, and the local bus driver said any time he saw something suspicious, he wrote down the plate number, and thus gave it to us. We found out who they were, and then where their hunting cabin was as we know people in that town. They say a lack of communication causes strife, so we communicated with them quite clearly, and we all came to a pretty quick understanding...

Hunters are... challenging. It sounds like you've found a particularly rude bunch - we've never had issues with any of the hunters near by, although the local slang for a group of hunters is a "gang".

If i were you, I'd be looking into renting out your land, with a contract and conditions. People treat things better that they pay for, and I know a lot of people in my home town that make a fair bit of money doing that. One guy rents cabins out to people for hunting season, even though he doesn't even have any land - they all also rent land elsewhere.  

My dad has 100 acres, mostly of bush, 80 + acres of which is across a river, so we seldom go through. We gave permission for our next door neighbours (who own 100 acre parcel just as a hunt camp, and have a cabin across the river), permission to hunt when we moved in. A) we knew they would have been doing it when the place was empty for 7 years anyway, B), they are respectful of our property and c) since there are a bunch of ATV trails that lead into the back and we back onto 100s of acres of crown land, if we didn't let the neighbours, another gang would move in (without asking).  One time they shared a deer they'd gotten on our land, which was very polite. Luckily they are respectful and from the sound of the gunfire, they mostly stick close to their hunt camp. My grandfather also always lent his back 40 out to one crowd each year; I never heard of any issues.

In the case where the neighbours weren't respectful, I'd look to rent it out... Sorry, can't let you use it this year, we need the money and found someone to rent it. If you're lucky you might get some yummy, effortless venison out of it.  Even a shack with an outhouse and woodstove and somewhere to hang the deer would be enough for people to rent it in Dad's area.


(btw, I agree with you on the high powered scopes and blinds and food crops - especially on someone else's land!? -  we do have a lot of people selling "deer apples" this time of year though)

Wow, correct me if I am wrong, I am getting the idea that you have a lot of land since you said 400 acres is not a lot. With that much it may be hard to survey it everyday to keep people out. Where I am, people develop a relationship with their yearly hunters and lease or rent out the space sometimes in exchange for upkeep including feeding the deer. They make A LOT of money doing this too. I was surprised when you mentioned this was all for free. I would definitely start charging and put out ads or start networking for good respectful hunters. I suggest you lay down the law,so to speak, when you make a deal and set the ground rules for being invited onto your property. Making very clear who owns the property and where they are allowed to go, especially since all those incidents you listed. I would make sure to keep the power to kick them off whenever you want if they break any rule or agreement.

for the reasons described above, i also think renting it out with clear rules would be a good idea. you could also make it clear to former hunters/neighbors/etc that with the exit of your livestock and current situation you need to do what you can to pay bills, and this is the current deal. You could also mention that you're not entirely sure about how it's going to go so you've put up a crapload of camera traps just to keep an eye on things. Instead of having to make threats or deal with goons, let them scare themselves.

Where my mother lives there is a lot of land in a program called "green acres" that preserves farms but allows hunting under very specific conditions. as s wesley mentions, they make good money.

This is obscene behavior by the hunters. Where I live at least, private land with a willing landowner that also has deer on it is rare, and would be treated like gold. The expectation is always that you present your best behavior, leave everything as you left it, and offer some of what you catch to the landowner as a minimum. Also offer help with some chores if they want. Charging for the hunting is unusual, but it wouldn't throw me.

As a hunter, but not a landowner, I would suggest two things. One, is to get hunting land insurance if you are going to allow anyone to hunt at all. Even if someone comes on your property illegally, the law does not always work the way we think it does, and you could be liable for accidents, etc. If you get insurance, and allow someone to hunt, I would ask them to pay you enough to cover the insurance premium.

The second thing I would suggest is to close off hunting to people you don't know well, and to people who just solicit you because they found your land on a map and they like the looks. If you have deer you want people to hunt, I would suggest reaching out to a local Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) chapter, or a similar organization. They will absolutely have some members that do not own land, but want to hunt. They treat hunting and being neighborly very seriously, and should go above and beyond whatever you require of them. Their membership in the organization would act as vetting for you. People don't tend to join groups like that if they are the kind to put a stand up on your property line and fire into your land.

A rancher friend of ours stopped allowing hunting on their 20k acres last year because people were breaking their gates and their cows were getting out.

Agree with Dale though, hunting would have stopped for me after the uncle incident.

adam johnson wrote:This is obscene behavior by the hunters. Where I live at least, private land with a willing landowner that also has deer on it is rare, and would be treated like gold. The expectation is always that you present your best behavior, leave everything as you left it, and offer some of what you catch to the landowner as a minimum. Also offer help with some chores if they want. Charging for the hunting is unusual, but it wouldn't throw me.

As a hunter, but not a landowner, I would suggest two things. One, is to get hunting land insurance if you are going to allow anyone to hunt at all. Even if someone comes on your property illegally, the law does not always work the way we think it does, and you could be liable for accidents, etc.

In Maine, it is actually a little different. Because 95% of the land here is privately owned, we have a sportsman law. It is kind of like the Good Samaritan Laws. No hunter could ever sue a landowner for getting hurt on their land. They have this in place because if they didn't, it would give a reason for landowners to post their land, and the state does not want landowners to do that. This goes for hunting, fishing, AtV's, etc.

For our annual Rock the Flock concert event, I get something called "Event Insurance", but it is like $50 for the day.

elle sagenev wrote:A rancher friend of ours stopped allowing hunting on their 20k acres last year because people were breaking their gates and their cows were getting out.

Agree with Dale though, hunting would have stopped for me after the uncle incident.

Oh my gosh, the incident with my Uncle was pretty significant, but I dread hunting season. It means putting up tons of "No Trespassing" signs, dragging logs across the field access roads, blocking the roads to the gravel pits, not to mention having fences driven through on two occasions a week apart, and having a rock kicked up by an ATV go through the chopper and do $40,000 worth of damage to the knives. We have had hunters rut up our fields driving through them with 4x4 trucks, and an untold amount of poaching.

In my town alone there has been (2) fatal hunting accidents, a friend that was shot at, and a 90 year old woman had a stray bullet go through her house.

And my Great-Great Grandfather in 1898 was murdered, and the people got away with it because it was claimed to have been a hunting accident.

Travis Johnson wrote:

elle sagenev wrote:A rancher friend of ours stopped allowing hunting on their 20k acres last year because people were breaking their gates and their cows were getting out.

Agree with Dale though, hunting would have stopped for me after the uncle incident.

Oh my gosh, the incident with my Uncle was pretty significant, but I dread hunting season. It means putting up tons of "No Trespassing" signs, dragging logs across the field access roads, blocking the roads to the gravel pits, not to mention having fences driven through on two occasions a week apart, and having a rock kicked up by an ATV go through the chopper and do $40,000 worth of damage to the knives. We have had hunters rut up our fields driving through them with 4x4 trucks, and an untold amount of poaching.

In my town alone there has been (2) fatal hunting accidents, a friend that was shot at, and a 90 year old woman had a stray bullet go through her house.

And my Great-Great Grandfather in 1898 was murdered, and the people got away with it because it was claimed to have been a hunting accident.

You make me happy to live in Wyoming. The law office I work at has represented a ton of people with hunting violations. We take things like that pretty darn seriously here. Plus I live on the plains so people aren't exactly hiding in the woods around here.

Travis Johnson wrote:
Because 95% of the land here is privately owned

That is pretty incredible for a state that size with that much wilderness. That definitely complicates things.

Avid hunter and leaseholder here.

Sadly, the problems you describe happen even on the private land I lease with several other hunters.

We have the entire property line marked clearly with signs every 25 yards, to the point where you cannot trespass any of the 1500 acres without seeing one of these signs.

We constantly have poachers and general trespassers riding through with atv's.

We have been shot at by angry poachers.

We have gated and fenced off most the property, and this still happens.

Over the past 5 years we have gone out of our way to befriend local game wardens. We  let them hunt with us for free, we say hello in permies, and we are generally just friendly with them.

Coincidentally the wardens routinely patrol our property, and they routinely arrest poachers.

It wasn't overnight, but now things are much better. Many of these problem hunters are just habitual law breakers, and once you get a few of them off the street, it makes a huge difference.


Therefore, my advice to you, is to lease this land. You may have to be a little more flexible with when you do things like log the land, because this COULD ruin your chances of taking a trophy buck, you may need to plan these kinds of things for the off seasons. However, if you have a solidly written lease, and agreeable leasers, they will be the surrogate stewards of the land.

People tend to take better care of the things they have to pay for, so be sure to charge enough. 6-10 dollars an acre is fair for large scale, but if you have great land like you describe, you can probably get away with more like 15. I would not let more than 2 or 3 people take this lease, and I would be sure to get a long term lease, like at least 5 years.

Get a lawyer to write this document, and be sure you and the hunters are happy with each other, and each others' rules.

Around here people will advertise their land lease with things like "QDMA only", which is a method of hunting deer which ensures a healthy herd. This is, in my opinion, the only way to attract ethical hunters, and even though it may seem like a limiting factor, it will actually attract more and better quality suitors.

The other alternative is to fence it off and spend all your time on the land during the hunting season to enforce your rules.

Or we could just go to Reverse Posting where everyone is considered a Trespasser unless you have written permission to be on the land. That would be really beneficial to the landowners since they are the ones paying enormous property taxes. Why should I have to spend lots of money on No Trespassing signs, fences and gates to keep people out of land that I own, that I pay taxes on?

The killer is, hunters complain about land being posted, until they buy their own. Once they get their own land, they put up No Hunting signs to keep it all to themselves.

Hunters have been begging for years to be allowed to hunt or fish on Sunday's, but they are foolish. If they are allowed to do that, they will be spending all their time looking for a place to hunt because EVERYONE will post their land then.

Travis Johnson wrote:I am thinking about banning hunting on my land.

I have always allowed some measure of hunting, figuring they were not my animals anyway, and it is not like animals know where property lines are, or even care if they did. I kept the number limited for safety reasons, but it was a good neighborly thing to do, and because some people are not blessed with any land to hunt on. But lately it seems as if the hunters are the ones who do not care.

We have had our share of bad hunters over the years. We have some drive through our fences, beat up my uncle almost to the point of death when he refused to let a group to hunt on him, had hunters kick me off my own land not knowing who the rightful owner was, etc.

This year I let a guy hunt on me, and he was fine with that until I found a skidder so I could do some logging. My trucker drops the skidder off, and an hour later my wife gets a text..."are you guys going to do some logging?" We inform him that we have to, property taxes are due. Then the next time I see him, he is sideways mad, saying how he pulled his hunting stands and "moved to a place he had control over." I explain to him that logging does not hurt hunting, the deer are still right there, I watch them every day because I am feeding them essentially. He disagrees, and ultimately gets all pissy-pants like some 8 year old would, not even listening to reasoning.

Then last year my neighbor asked if he could hunt on me because "that is where the deer are coming out." He is a good neighbor, so I told him he could, but then he starts in on how dumb I was to get swindled by a logger. This hunter would have done this, done that, and goes on and on about how that would never happen to him. I almost said, "why don't you hunt on your own land then." He really should, he has 400 acres which is not a lot, but still plenty to find some deer on, why does he have to hunt on me? If he sucks so bad at hunting he cannot get them on his own land, then surely more land to hunt on is not going to help.

I have nothing against hunting, but it rather irks me that hunters do not seem to understand we pay thousands of dollars a year in property taxes, and the land was not cheap to buy in the first place. There is nothing FREE about the land they hunt on for FREE, so why do they make me always feel like the bad guy when I "ruin" their hunting by working on my farm?

I think I am done with hunters.

I charge them an outrageous fee to hunt on Buzzard's Roost, The 1,000 fee contract also forces them to use stands I put up and to stay on marked trails and only Bows are allowed.
My strategy is geared to make them want to go elsewhere and it is working quite well.
The first year a hunter decided that it was ok to trespass, my .308 aimed at his head and my taking his weapons from him, along with the sheriff deputies, convinced him that it was wrong to trespass on land that is well posted.
Once he was arrested and cuffed one of the deputies and I put his weapons in the police car trunk so if the judge allowed him to reclaim them he could (also meant I didn't go to jail for disarming him).
I immediately created my "Bow only" hunting requirement and still had two folks want to use muzzle loaders, I told them, sure but I doubt you can get enough bend to send the arrow any distance.
When they showed up with their guns, I told them "which part of Bow hunting only didn't you understand?" I sent them on their way with a "Never come back, you are no longer welcome".

Hunters are completely inconsiderate for the most part, thinking permission to hunt means they get the run of your land.
I don't even let my friends hunt my land anymore.
Now the signs have "trespassers will be shot twice" added to the bottom in 4" red letters.

Travis Johnson wrote:
Hunters have been begging for years to be allowed to hunt or fish on Sunday's, but they are foolish. If they are allowed to do that, they will be spending all their time looking for a place to hunt because EVERYONE will post their land then.

In your state people can't fish or hunt on Sundays?  I don't understand why being allowed to hunt on Sundays would change whether people posted their land?

Trace Oswald wrote:

Travis Johnson wrote:
Hunters have been begging for years to be allowed to hunt or fish on Sunday's, but they are foolish. If they are allowed to do that, they will be spending all their time looking for a place to hunt because EVERYONE will post their land then.

In your state people can't fish or hunt on Sundays?  I don't understand why being allowed to hunt on Sundays would change whether people posted their land?

Well, yes and no...

Hunting of any type, all year is banned on Sunday's. Period!

But fishing gets kind of silly. You can fresh water fish on Sundays, all year, but salt water fishing is different. You cannot salt water fish from Sunset Saturday, until Sunrise Monday...if the dates are between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Basically you can salt water fish anytime you want as long as it is not tourist season (Memorial Day through Labor Day).

Travis Johnson wrote:
Hunting of any type, all year is banned on Sunday's. Period!

But fishing gets kind of silly. You can fresh water fish on Sundays, all year, but salt water fishing is different. You cannot salt water fish from Sunset Saturday, until Sunrise Monday...if the dates are between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Basically you can salt water fish anytime you want as long as it is not tourist season (Memorial Day through Labor Day).

I've never heard of anything like that.  Interesting.

I looked it up and only Maine and Mass have complete hunting bans on Sundays while a few states restrict it somewhat.  

People in Maine like to enjoy our outdoors. If they allowed hunting on Sunday, the only day of the week landowners could go out and enjoy their land without fear of being shot, then the posted signs would go up because then there would be no days of tranquility between October and December; really the best days of the year to be outside. (Cool, no bugs, beautiful fall leaves, etc)

The hunters claim that a lot more hunting revenue could be brought in because it limits hunters time in the woods, but the joke is, if they allowed hunting on Sunday, the hunters would just spend all their time trying to find a place to hunt.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:
I charge them an outrageous fee to hunt on Buzzard's Roost, The 1,000 fee contract also forces them to use stands I put up and to stay on marked trails and only Bows are allowed.
My strategy is geared to make them want to go elsewhere and it is working quite well.

I like that. We just had someone show up at our farm looking for my dad, asking what it would take to be able to hunt the farm during a certain week in November and second gun season. First thought in my head was to tell him it would take $20,000. Not trying to be a jerk, but you are REALLY going to have to make it worth my time to deal with that.
Pretty sure he is one of two guys that said they'd do a bunch of brush clearing around the pond in exchange for access to bow hunt. They barely did anything before the excuses started flying, chainsaw trouble, axe handle broke, etc., then bow hunted all season and then had the balls to show up the next year to set up stands not having done a lick a work. My dad reminded them of their commitment and failure to perform. We didn't see anything of them again.

Hunters used to work my father and me at the same time too. They would say, "Oh your Dad gave me permission to hunt here", or "Oh Travis said I could hunt here." After awhile my dad just told hunters to see me, and that he was not giving anyone permission to hunt, and after a bit I told my Dad that no ne had permission to hunt. That stopped a lot of the non-sense.