That’s a really good point. Being open to / allowing hunting can be the basis of many good relationships with quality people. We let a (distant) neighbor hunt 2nd shotgun season, which is one week each year, and the rest of the year I could ask him a major favor every damn weekend and he’d do it. Not that I would of course :lol: Case in point, he just texted last week “hey, we just got a skidloader, let me know if you have a job for it.” The goodwill value is immense when you allow people whom you trust to hunt – evidence, I guess, of the increasing scarcity of hunting ground. Kinda like how we horsepeople treasure trail riding ground. A million reasons not to allow it, so we’re grateful for those that do.
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Hunting leases usually run a couple grand just for those couple of weeks so he probably thinks he’s got the better end of the deal! Especially if you have nice big bucks.
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Here is my experience with having property which people can hunt on some of the areas that directly border it, although my property is quite a bit larger than what you are talking about.
I have a walk in easement that runs through part of my property so that hunters can reach the public land that is behind mine. Where I live if you have any property border that touches public land you will probably have hunters on it hunting along your property line during some season or other. I have an invisible fence for my dogs and the horses are clearly fenced too. My dogs are very NOT friendly and I have signs up letting people know. So far I have only had someone ignore the signs once, it was a group of JWs come up to try and evangelize me. They opened their car door and got bit and promptly left. Haven’t had any issues since.
Livestock and property laws here keep idiots from messing with your horses or cattle e.g. feeding them, petting them etc. if they are smart which most are. Very few people in Montana are dumb enough to do something which could get them shot, e.g. trespassing on private property with a gun. You don’t have to post your land in Montana, it is considered no trespass unless you have given explicit permission for people to hunt it and it is up to them to know if they are on private land or not.
During hunting season I still wear orange when off my property and so do the horses if I am out riding them or using them for hunting during rifle deer and elk season.
The land mine backs up to has a number of elk on it but it is so rugged and steep once you past my property that I get maybe two to three people a year going back in there via the easement, and usually they are coming out on horseback after entering the public land from a gate about a mile away. They do a 6 mile loop through the corner of the public land from that gate and then exit via my easement instead of riding six miles back to the gate along that gated road they come in off. Then it is only a mile ride up the road to where they park their horse trailers.
There is one old Vietnam vet that walks that route once or twice a season and then there are two ranchers that make that ride once every couple of years but that is all I get for hunters back in there. Very rugged and or unappealing hunting area will keep people away.
My neighbor to my south boundary shoots a lot as he target practices along a stretch of his property that borders mine because it has a nice flat bench area where he can shoot out to a 100 yards or so. Doesn’t bother me at all as my kids and I shoot a lot as well over on our place.
I only allow one or two people to hunt on my actual property a year though and both are close friends. Never had a problem with them, one is a lady in her 80s who likes to hunt my place because she doesn’t have to walk very far to hunt as she has knee problems and the other is a guy I have known for years who comes down once or twice a year to hunt over a weekend during archery season.
I have a trail camera up about 50 - 75 yards from the back of the house and I post videos I get off that on my youtube. So if you watch any of those you can see roughly what type of vegetation etc. is on my place and what it roughly looks like. I am up in the mountains of NW Montana. To date I have never had a single trespasser on my place or one of the game cameras I have up would have picked them up or the dogs would have found them and bit them. Like I mentioned before good property and self defense laws out here make trespassing a very unattractive prospect. Anyway here is a link to the youtube channel if you want to see what my land looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/user/AndyTheCornbread/videos
The ranch to the north of me has been letting people hunt their place for almost 40 years now and in 40 years they have only had one problem with one guy and that was taken care of quickly. So far having zero issues on my place has been my experience as well.
Where you buy and how things happen are all a part of life and a lot of it is 100% out of your control 
H bought this place when it was on a ruddy dirt road w/o city water. Over the 30 years he’s been here (I’ve been here 20) the road got paved, we got city water. The 400 acres of forest behind and north of us was cut over and sold 3-4 times before the bottom fell out in 2008. The last owner before that put in 16 trailer-house pads and septic tanks on the 4 acres of road frontage that abuts our northern boundary. I was gutted. I’m sitting in the middle of an oasis of mixed forest with a natural swimming hole… and now my neighbors aren’t trees but trailers. No regulations to speak of, just scratch the trees off and hook up anything. Over the years, it’s been almost a non-issue. The owners of the 400 acres have cut more trails in it, and planted pines. They also bought 300 more acres. Now yeah, he’s a slumlord, there’s likely 500+ trailer lots on property he bought on the cheap and rents out- but we got lucky- this plot of now 700 acres is closest to his home, so it’s his family’s playground for dirt bikes, walking the dogs, playing in the 3 acre lake he built. He loves to have us ride our horses on it and feeds our donkey whatever chips he has in his truck when we cross paths. His eldest son lives next to it too, and he loves it like his Dad does.
Oh, and they hunt it. The entire east side of my 32 acres adjoins their land. I don’t worry about it. We don’t ride the woods in gun season and it’s ok. His stands and green fields are set up well away from us, and we’re up high relative to that land.
My property is 6 acres that backs up to a preserve that is open to hunting (and closed to others except Sundays) from Thanksgiving through the end of January. It is pretty rough terrain and you have to be a dedicated hunter to go in there. We’ve been there 13 years now and haven’t had any issue. You can hear shots but other than the hunter who approached us and asked us to park on our property, I’ve never seen any hunters there (my idiot neighbors notwithstanding). If it was a higher trafficked preserve, I might have thought about it but as it is, it’s nice to have guaranteed undeveloped land around us
I married into a family of hunters and my animals are always safe. The majority of hunters are responsible. The problem with having conservation land that adjoins yours is the fact that:
- You have no idea the mentality of the hunters allowed to hunt on it.
Some blast away at anything that moves, no matter what color is showing. If you fence the property line that will not keep some from cutting the fence in search of whatever they are after OR already shot who is still moving ( it happens often).
So my advice is to pass on the property. I would be a wreck during hunting season.
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Just realized I am not “broke” to gunfire.
The last owner before that put in 16 trailer-house pads and septic tanks on the 4 acres of road frontage that abuts our northern boundary. I was gutted
I looked at real nice horse property that was adjacent to a ranch, this was in an unzoned area so we passed on the property. My thought was similar to what I just quoted. This was back in early 1980s… years later I was working in that area so went by to see what had changed… the horse property we looked at was still there, the vacant ranch land was all concrete with a high school football stadium backing up to the fence line with the high school marching band practice area next to the quite horse pastures
My fiance has an AK47. I hit the dirt when a plastic bag blows by but the horses don’t even raise their heads to automatic weapon fire. I rode my mare during opening shotgun day (in my arena where it was safe) and it sounded like a war was being raged but she didn’t set a foot wrong.
What a good girl Give her a pat for me.
I react to gunfire, too. It’s getting better, the more time passes, but it will probably always be there in some form. I know many other war veterans can relate to that. My Mustang has shrapnel in her chest and an old bullet wound. Someone out West didn’t want her out there on the BLM range, apparently. Like me, she is getting better as time passes.
I live a few properties away from a state forest. It’s safer here. Too many stray bullet stories from neighbors. People love their guns, but they don’t understand how far bullets can fly from the big ones. Most people don’t own enough land to fire a high powered rifle safely unless they build a berm or range with something that can absorb the rounds. You also have to keep in mind where the roads are, where houses are, if neighbors might be in their pastures, etc… Too many people need to repeat their gun safety courses.
Check this out if you think it’s safe to fire that gun outside of a range:
