We have made it through three firearm deer seasons this fall, and we have two to go. The weekend after Christmas will be antlerless only deer hunting, as will be the final one coming up January 17-19, 2020. Bowhunting is continuous until the end of the final gun season.
I have had trespassers complain that I keep "all the deer" on our place. We have planted trees, and we have natural timber, too, so we have good wildlife habitat. Some of the boundary hunters and trespassers are farmers who have cleared most or all of their timber, so I have no sympathy for them if they don't have a place to hunt.
Susan and I planted all of the trees in this photo ourselves, and we greatly enjoy seeing the deer who inhabit our woods. We have friends who hunt in our timber, and they are good guests. Our hunters call before coming and going. We always help them retrieve the deer they bag.
Trespassers/Poachers, on the other hand, slip onto our properties, shoot deer they don't retrieve, and leave the carcasses for us to stumble upon. We hear plenty of coyote activity at night in our timber every fall because of scenes like this. This little deer is likely one of this year's fawns and should not have been a target for any sportsman.
What kind of person shoots a young four-point buck and then leaves it for the scavengers? This is common behavior that we see every year. One thing we have seen change is the use of rifles to bag deer for bow tags. We used to hear rifles at night regularly, but Illinois made crossbows legal for hunting, and I think that poachers are using those to take deer silently while trespassing, or night hunting from roads. It would be pretty easy to do, as deer will idly stand closeby a road as vehicles move by. I have to pass deer nearly every night when I go check on the farm.
Trespassers are just bad guests to have on your ground. This damage on one of our white oaks was caused by an Amish guy we caught, who "didn't see the fence" where our boundary runs. He ran a climbing stand up the tree, skinning bark and also cutting limbs as he went up.
We also have to watch for boundary hunters. They like to set up next to our property and take their chances on whether they can retrieve a deer without being caught trespassing. This stand was less than the 300 yard requirement from our house, so we get to worry about stray bullets a bit more than normal. If we catch the hunter retrieving a deer on us, we can have him prosecuted for two violations at once, for what that is worth.
Trespassers are a brazen bunch. This is a bait station that someone put on us a few years ago; totally illegal in Illinois.
This violator's stand was in our woods a good twenty feet. A Conservation Policeman seized it , but for some reason the owner did not make an attempt to claim it.
Last year some trespasser was hanging scent wicks along the pipeline. That was a waste of effort, because the deer already hang out there, and stinkums won't make up for lack of hunting skill.
This stand was on us by a good fifty feet, and it was carried over a fence to get here. I checked on the guy I caught with this one, and he has drug convictions. I keep reminding myself that trespassers are criminals and to be careful when approaching them.
They get lucky, probably more than we know. The deer that was killed here was gone before I found it, and the blood was still wet.
These people won't look you in the eye when you catch them, and this guy was smart enough to spot the camera and face away from it as he passed. Might get him next time, though.
Bullet tracks on our yard trees serve as a reminder that trespassers are lowlifes. We planted a cedar screen south of the farm house many years ago and that made road hunting a little more difficult.
Poaching goes on, though. This little pile of remains was gnawed by coyotes in the backyard at the farm this month.
