A Tale of Trespass

[DouglasR]

I definitely feel the sentiment of what he’s saying about too many people in our country living in fear of lawyers any lawsuits, but this guy’s an obvious asshole.
“It’s better to ask for permission than beg for forgiveness”- common sense.

Outside posts some pretty opinionated articles sometimes. Did anyone read the trail runner/trail parasite article from last year?

Trail Runners Are Lazy Parasites

They're exploding in numbers and having a massive impact on our favorite trails, yet the short-shorts crowd almost never pitches in when it comes to trail work

www.outsideonline.com

 

[Scrappy]

I do find it interesting when ranches get chopped up into communities without access points. Like you’d think someone during the planning process would say “ maybe we should put in a community access path owned by the HOA so people can access the NF without conflicts.

Your looking at it all wrong, the selling point is. Our HOA has land locked access to NF. No one wants to buy land that will have the public running all around it. Right or wrong that's just the way it is

 

[Deleted member 28227]

Your looking at it all wrong, the selling point is. Our HOA has land locked access to NF. No one wants to buy land that will have the public running all around it. Right or wrong that's just the way it is

I meant for the HOA members, which is kinda what the article is about.

I’m not talking about the general public. I’m saying I find it weird when a community is created and people on one side of the street have NF access and their neighbors and fellow HOA members do not.

HOA lands are not public they are private and HOAs can and do restrict access to members, eg pools, clubhouses,etc. There are a bunch I know of in CO that didn’t think to build a member trail into the NF.

 

[Mudder]

Related but a bit off-topic is people who claim dominion but don't actually have any. I was on my own property Quail hunting when some guy shot near my head as I topped a small ridge. I yelled and started over the top again and he shot again maybe thirty feet below me. Then he yells that I'm trespassing. I told him if he points that thing at me again I'm going to shoot him dead and I own this property. I was sorely tempted.

Numerous times I've had some rancher who had the grazing rights (BLM) try to chase me off saying I was trespassing.

I had written permission to be on a property and the Sheriff wrote me a citation anyway for trespassing. I beat it in court, but it still cost me a day off work.

I was fishing when some guy comes up and demands to see my fishing license and then demanded to inspect my catch. That day I wasn't in the mood and told him to take a hike and leave me be or I was going to thump his ass. Just some busybody who had his nose out of joint because I was fishing his favorite spot. I was in the middle of my hunting lease, had my license and permit (private Creek).

I had some Farmer pull up in his tractor and read me the riot act about me trespassing. I leased a two-acre plot of low land to raise winter wildlife feed. He leased/sharecropped a couple of fields nearby and thought he owned the place.

ETC. and ad nauseam I go out mostly for some peace and quiet, way too often some bombastic buttmunch disturbs it. It has happened numerous times over the years and always rubbed me the wrong way.

 

[thusby]

Related but a bit off-topic is people who claim dominion but don't actually have any. I was on my own property Quail hunting when some guy shot near my head as I topped a small ridge. I yelled and started over the top again and he shot again maybe thirty feet below me. Then he yells that I'm trespassing. I told him if he points that thing at me again I'm going to shoot him dead and I own this property. I was sorely tempted.

Numerous times I've had some rancher who had the grazing rights (BLM) try to chase me off saying I was trespassing.

I had written permission to be on a property and the Sheriff wrote me a citation anyway for trespassing. I beat it in court, but it still cost me a day off work.

I was fishing when some guy comes up and demands to see my fishing license and then demanded to inspect my catch. That day I wasn't in the mood and told him to take a hike and leave me be or I was going to thump his ass. Just some busybody who had his nose out of joint because I was fishing his favorite spot. I was in the middle of my hunting lease, had my license and permit (private Creek).

I had some Farmer pull up in his tractor and read me the riot act about me trespassing. I leased a two-acre plot of low land to raise winter wildlife feed. He leased/sharecropped a couple of fields nearby and thought he owned the place.

ETC. and ad nauseam I go out mostly for some peace and quiet, way too often some bombastic buttmunch disturbs it. It has happened numerous times over the years and always rubbed me the wrong way.

Yes, this is a real nuisance as well. That personality type always seems very unhinged and armed.

 

[LuketheDog]

https://www.chieftain.com/news/20200124/arkansas-river-fishermans-lawsuit-gets-new-life

This is another similar conflict that's been ongoing in Colorado. This article doesn't give all the details, but stream-access proponents are supporting the fisherman and his case to open access on Colorado rivers so I went and did a bunch of homework on it one day. In reality the guy decided that he's too old to be patient and use the courts to overturn the law, so he habitually just trespasses over private property to get to his fishing spots on a river with roughly 100 miles of public access in it's first 150 miles of water-the fishing hole that started the court battle requires trespass across FIVE private properties. I'm all for better fishing access in Colorado, but Mr. Hill being a trespassing jackass is not helping our cause...

 

[Tradewind]

too often some bombastic buttmunch disturbs it.

LOL. Quote of the day

 

[Dougfirtree]

Related but a bit off-topic is people who claim dominion but don't actually have any. I was on my own property Quail hunting when some guy shot near my head as I topped a small ridge. I yelled and started over the top again and he shot again maybe thirty feet below me. Then he yells that I'm trespassing. I told him if he points that thing at me again I'm going to shoot him dead and I own this property. I was sorely tempted.

Numerous times I've had some rancher who had the grazing rights (BLM) try to chase me off saying I was trespassing.

I had written permission to be on a property and the Sheriff wrote me a citation anyway for trespassing. I beat it in court, but it still cost me a day off work.

I was fishing when some guy comes up and demands to see my fishing license and then demanded to inspect my catch. That day I wasn't in the mood and told him to take a hike and leave me be or I was going to thump his ass. Just some busybody who had his nose out of joint because I was fishing his favorite spot. I was in the middle of my hunting lease, had my license and permit (private Creek).

I had some Farmer pull up in his tractor and read me the riot act about me trespassing. I leased a two-acre plot of low land to raise winter wildlife feed. He leased/sharecropped a couple of fields nearby and thought he owned the place.

ETC. and ad nauseam I go out mostly for some peace and quiet, way too often some bombastic buttmunch disturbs it. It has happened numerous times over the years and always rubbed me the wrong way.

In my experience, for every doofus like the doc in the story, there are 16 people who try to keep the public off of land they can legally access with intimidation, signs, etc.
Back when I was a seasonal Forest Ranger, my boss used to have me go paint this one boundary line at least once a season. The neighboring landowner would keep painting over our blazes and putting up posted signs, we would keep taking them down... They would also post huge, scary signs about "No Public Access!!!" on the road in, despite the fact that there was legal public access. Apparently it was a hunting club who's members were mostly state troopers...

 

[Wildabeest]

Your looking at it all wrong, the selling point is. Our HOA has land locked access to NF. No one wants to buy land that will have the public running all around it. Right or wrong that's just the way it is

I wish all public land had some form of easement access. As the gov’t laid out these checkerboards and sold off land to homesteaders, that would have been the time to do it. But they didn’t, and fixing it now is not something that’s gonna happen at the macro level. So we are left with trying to address access to specific parcels individually.

I’ve decided that since the overall access problem is not going to be resolved, I’ll find ways to work within its constraints and use it to my advantage where I can. Thus I’ve decided to focus my investments in buying land vs. having it in the stock market. I get a lower return and have costs such as taxes and HOA fees, but I get the offsetting benefit of enjoying the properties while I own them. Each of them provide access to public land. Two of them provide exclusive access - one via a private HOA road (any property owner in the HOA has access), the other only accessible if you own property directly bordering the public since there’s no HOA roads abutting the public land.

I’m not sure how I’d respond if someone asked to cross my property to gain access to the public. Part of me says I’ve invested a lot of money to get this limited access and therefor want to protect my hunting opportunity as much as possible. The other part says it’s not my land (the public part) and if I’m using my private land to restrict access to public then I’m part of the problem. I guess it would boil down to who was asking, how they did it, and what feeling I had about the person when they made the request. I can assure you though that if someone was crossing my property without even asking, I would run them off in a fairly aggressive manner. The nice thing about these places is that the property owners all tend to watch out for each other. If they see someone on my property, they will confront them and I would do the same for them.

 

[tzone]

I do find it interesting when ranches get chopped up into communities without access points. Like you’d think someone during the planning process would say “ maybe we should put in a community access path owned by the HOA so people can access the NF without conflicts.

There is soooo much wrong with that I don't even know where to start.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

There is soooo much wrong with that I don't even know where to start.

read the thread before you take something out of context

 

[tzone]

In my experience, for every doofus like the doc in the story, there are 16 people who try to keep the public off of land they can legally access with intimidation, signs, etc.
Back when I was a seasonal Forest Ranger, my boss used to have me go paint this one boundary line at least once a season. The neighboring landowner would keep painting over our blazes and putting up posted signs, we would keep taking them down... They would also post huge, scary signs about "No Public Access!!!" on the road in, despite the fact that there was legal public access. Apparently it was a hunting club who's members were mostly state troopers...

Tell us more about the "scary signs." Did they have monsters painted on them?

 

[tzone]

read the thread before you take something out of context

It's not out of contex. I read the thread before I read your post.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

It's not out of contex. I read the thread before I read your post.

Clearly not... #23

 

[NEWHunter]

Talk about entitled, disrespectful,
and paying lip service to empathy - what a joke. The problem is he doesn’t realize he is the problem. My parents have these same kind of “neighbors” and these people are ridiculous.

This guy just assumes he can run across people’s property because he’s their neighbor and “not hurting anything.” When I was a kid we had to knock on the neighbor’s door if our ball went in their yard and ask if we could go get it. That’s respectful and doing it the right way.

Do you know how many turkeys I could have killed in my lifetime by just hopping the fence because I’m their neighbor or I know their neighbor? It’s a rhetorical question cause the answer is A LOT. I wouldn’t be hurting anything other than the turkey. I’d be leaving no trace, I’d offer half the meat, etc.

A lot I could say, but the author criticized a guy for donating money to charity! I think the doctor is the ignorant fool. Maybe his neighbor donates money because he makes $40/hour and he knows he adds more value to his charity of choice by donating an hour of overtime pay than doing some volunteer work for two hours that has an equivalent value of $10/hour. Guy went to school for a long time and didn’t learn enough.

Rant over.

 

[44hunter45]

Trigger alert!

It amazes me how some are pathologically drawn to trespass when they can just as easily (and legally) access public ground that is bigger and better nearby. And every one of them seems to think they are a constitutional and property rights lawyer.
It's like Cliven Bundy decided our property looked like a good place to put his cows.

Our land does not offer access to public ground, but it has produced some fine whitetails over the years and folks round about know it.

More than once we have found people on our place who told us that "George" told them it was "OK", or that their family had permission from the previous land owner. My response is always, "WTF is George?" and "I don't care where your Grandpa hunted."
Inevitably, when lying doesn't work, they get pushy about "rights" which they do not actually have. We've owned our place since 1993 and people still try to play the "Grandpa" card on us. It's pathetic. I even had a guy drive on once and produce a map from 1904 showing a rail line from when Potlatch Corp owned this and put up temporary rail lines to log it. Potlatch Corp putting a rail on their deeded land does not constitute an easement any more than me putting a two track on my own land.
The varsity players, like the AH doctor who wrote the referenced article, are ready to drop the, "Europeans stole all this land from the Natives" line. As if that gave them, a European, access by divine right.

All I know is that right now, today, Mrs45 and I are paying taxes on this so their kids can go to schools, and insurance premiums in case one of them decides to sue us. (And they have.)

We have NEVER had anyone offer us goods or labor in exchange for access. I always smile when I read, "How to get access on private ground" articles. In my experience, no seems to be reading them. IYKWIM
Now a whole bunch of HTers are gonna tell me they offer something of value when they ask for access. I truly believe most of you would. I'm just relating our experience as landowners. We are almost always approached as if we are denying the masses something that is theirs by right. I've always wondered how many of these so called hunters shoot a lot more venison than they have tags for or are filling grandma's tag. They all act like they are living the own private little Les Miserable.

Well, they ain't.

 

[AggieHunter]

This is related to some to the same topic but I seem to be finding some more no trespassing signs on what I am positive to be public land, but just don't cross in case I am wrong. I think we also need to work on access to landlocked land as others said.

 

[NEWHunter]

I do find it interesting when ranches get chopped up into communities without access points (for community members). Like you’d think someone during the planning process would say “ maybe we should put in a community access path owned by the HOA so HOA members can access the NF without conflicts.

-Edited because people seem to have poor reading comprehension

Interesting how local politics differ and the fact that some of those types subdivisions are allowed to occur without more access for all - not just subdivision residents. If it was Madison WI they wouldn’t let the subdivision occur without the entire world having access to the public lands beyond and a permanent sign publicizing it. Of course Madison would probably also deed restrict that public access so you couldn’t cross it with a firearm . . .

 

[MTLabrador]

This is related to some to the same topic but I seem to be finding some more no trespassing signs on what I am positive to be public land, but just don't cross in case I am wrong. I think we also need to work on access to landlocked land as others said.

Find out for sure if it is public, then get with the land management agency to get those signs taken down if it is.

 

[LuketheDog]

Interesting how local politics differ and the fact that some of those types subdivisions are allowed to occur without more access for all - not just subdivision residents. If it was Madison WI they wouldn’t let the subdivision occur without the entire world having access to the public lands beyond and a permanent sign publicizing it. Of course Madison would probably also deed restrict that public access so you couldn’t cross it with a firearm . . .

This is the Front Range in Colorado, the mecca of subdivision, it's been 30+ years since reasonable thought has been employed in either planning or construction of these communities..