More on closing public hunting land
Bob Krumm again talks about political favoritism and its impact on hunting land:
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission recently closed the Lock Five wildlife management area to public hunting. Apparently, at least one neighboring landowner had complained about trespassers on his land. That landowner, who bought his property knowing there was public hunting next door, is a powerful lobbyist. He in turn contacted another very powerful lobbyist who happens to also be the Chairman of the TWRC.
June 5th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
>who bought his property knowing there was public hunting next door
I’m sorta bugged by the general disregard for property rights I see in a lot of hunters. The fact there’s public land adjacent to my property doesn’t justify trespassing.
June 5th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Stormy, You’re absolutely right that there is no excuse for trespassing whether hunting or not. Still, the timing of the land purchase is relevant. It eliminates the ability to complain about noise and other nuisances. Or at least it should. Of course that didn’t stop some people in a certain Newport News, Virginia subdivision from complaining about aircraft noise even though their homes weren’t built until a half century after the existence of Patrick Henry Field.
June 5th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Oh, I agree the whole deal is fishy. I’m just complaining about the ‘Well he bought land next to public game lands; of course he’s going to have hunters trespassing’ attitude.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
I’m a nervous hunter. I can’t deal with the thought that there might be people anywhere near me that I don’t know about. I only hunt on private land.
That said, when you get out into the woods, boundary between properties is not always obvious. I’ve strayed onto neighboring property more than once. Perhaps the land wasn’t properly posted, but whatever the reason, there have been times when I couldn’t say definitively whose land I was on. I’ve been in tree stands where I couldn’t say who owned them.
If your land borders public hunting grounds, you have to fence it off or post every other tree. Otherwise, you can’t reasonably expect people to respect a boundary they can’t see.
June 6th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Again, I’m not talking about people who accidentally end up on land because it’s not posted. I’m talking about cases, where the boundary is clearly posted and hunters just ignore the boundary and then try to get all huffy when they get caught and act like they have some sort of constitutional right to hunt whever they like.
And before you say this is pretty rare, my father is on the board of directors at a YMCA camp in Pennsylvania, and they have a constant problem with this during deer season. In a lot of cases, the hunters in question will rip down the no trespassing signs and then, when they get caught, try to claim they didn’t know they were on private land because it wasn’t posted.
June 7th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
However, the way to deal with trespassers is to deal with them, not to close public lands.