There are more ways to poach than you can shake a stick at. We hear the rifle shots early in the morning and late in the evening during bow season. Deer are checked over the phone or Internet now, and nobody views the carcasses. There are a lot of deer tagged as bow kills that are killed by rifles. At least those deer are counted. The number that are killed, stripped of the best cuts and antlers and never reported are a complete unknown. Then you have trespassers, who fancy themselves to be real hunters, but they can't see a boundary line or ask permission from the landowners they hunt on. Don't get me started on road hunters. I interrupted a couple of road hunters on the backside of our timber today. They drive around at daybreak and dusk, popping deer from the road, and tagging them as legitimately killed deer. A poacher from Texas was caught near us last year. He had been violating in our neighborhood for some time, and his fines totaled up into five figures, plus his truck and equipment. Guys like him do a lot of damage to our deer herd before they are caught.
When this nation was founded, one of the basics was and still is the concept of your ability to own property. And if you choose to, make it exclusive to yourself (private). In my opinion, poachers and vandals have no rights while they are on your property.
ReplyDeleteThe county where I live has a population of about 45,000 souls. It is larger than 2 eastern states. I have ridden horseback all day and never opened a gate or crossed a fence line. Farmers and ranchers here find trespassers and thieves to be as despicable as coyotes. Criminals on the run and other ner'do wells have been known to disappear. Did I mention that every rancher I know has a back hoe? You know, the kind that can reach down 20 feet.