Quote:
Originally Posted by Houndogn
Hmm the reason i haven't commented, well first of all, most of these comments aren't worth replying too. And no i'm not HWF, and yes the pics have gone to the right person not this forum. Yes it is occuppied land. And no it wasn't the black dually, if fact i haven't seen them this year, and they tell me they only hunt on the their own land ( full of crap they are). Maybe they have a different truck this year, LOL. The reason for the post was to let them know that i know and to expect to have miserable day real soon. In my view it is poaching, whether that is the legal deffinition or not, i don't know or care. What they did was illegal and no one came to my door to ask permission for anything. I don't lock gates because my land is not fenced, get a county map and stay the hell off of land you don't have permission on ! It is not up to me to fence them out, it is privately owned land, and it their obligation to stay out or ask. On that note i will let all go back to calling me a liar and fighting over what is poaching. Sometimes this forum is so much BS......Have a good day hunting, thats what i am going to do !
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Not slamming landowners or the OP here but you can't always expect everyone to magically just know where boundaries begin and end.
The case here seems pretty clear cut because of the house being so near by.
But in general...
When folks rely on the argument that they don't have to post or fence their land... that is well and fine but when you do... you will no doubt have more difficulties than someone that does post and fence their land... and more anger and conflict as a result.
I understand the OP being upset... especially if the event occurred within sight of his home or something like that but... he could probably avoid a degree of future conflict by at least posting the property line... even if he doesn't legally have to.
My thought is...good luck getting anything to stick if your land is not posted, gated or even fenced.
Without some sort of physical indication of where the property starts or stops or an indication that you don't want your animals to wander or people to enter into land because it is owned... it might be very tough to win.
It may be too easy to argue that they thought they were still outside of your property line... didn't see a house or that they simply had no way of reasonably knowing they were on your land or committing a crime.
If it is a neighbour he might even claim that someone moved the peg so the land is actually his... it happens...
County landowner map or not... even with a GPS to help out... there can be huge discrepancies between the information on the map...(because of when/how it was surveyed) and the GPS readings.
I know of one instance where a very long fence line was actually off the mark by 300 meters on a large ranch in the foothills.
That is to say that it all looked legit according to the landowner map but when compared to a topographic map and a GPS... the fence line (that had been in place for generations) was actually in the wrong spot.
If the offender can successfully argue that point... then there is a little quirk in law called...Actus Reus (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus ) that can come into play.
Essentially if the trespasser doesn't believe he did anything wrong and didn't have an intent to commit crime and therefore had/has no guilty thoughts... he walks.
That said, I would think that the clear line between cultivated land and non- cultivated land or the presence of a road allowance would satisfy the requirements of an indication of some sort of boundary.
Again... regardless of whether or not the hunter is responsible to use a map and know where he is... landowners must also accept that if they want to avoid conflict they also have a responsibility to protect their property by indicating where there property starts and stops because you simply cannot expect everyone to be as savy with a map as you would like them to be.
Further... it seems reasonable to me that if a landowner really wants to reduce the number of these incidents... they would at least post their land along cut lines and roads. Even without a fence...a sign every few hundred feet/yards or at access points would probably help a lot and... would make prosecution much easier when it didn't.
I know it sucks to have to put up signs or build a fence just to keep others out but... that is the reality if you want to accomplish that.
To that end... I've often thought that an appropriate punishment for trespass might be to have to help build fences or pay for signs so that landowners would not have to bear the cost of fencing and signage alone. At least that way the "fines" would contribute to the prevention of future difficulties.
Imagine the difficulties that might be avoided if landowners had access to free labor or materials to help them distinguish their boundaries and express their thoughts on hunting access. Imagine how much easier it would be for hunters to gain permission if the free signs also had owner info on them.
I think that would be a win win for all of us.