[QUOTE=Beverley;3947427]
Without land, there’s no hunting. You piss off landowners- and it doesn’t matter who is right on the merits- you will have no land.
With the first hunt where I earned my colors, every member had standing orders to stop and help ANY landowner at ANY time of the year, even in the middle of a hunting day. If nothing else, a friendly hello. A couple of us did stop once and one held horses while the other helped hitch bushhog to tractor. A really really small price to pay for the privilege of crossing his land.[/QUOTE]
Agreed. I do not have mounted foxhunters on my land - but I do allow hunting. The folks who get to hunt on my land don’t just show up, hunt - and leave. These are nice people who are neighbors first - hunters second. Landowner relations are imperative for ANY type of hunting to continue.
And trail riding for that matter. In some areas horseback riders are the problem - not hunters, anglers or pedestrians. Trespassing is the number one complaint of rural dwellers.
About a month ago a neighbors cattle got out near the road and I stopped my truck to help out. Didn’t have anything handy to get the cattle away from the road… but for some reason my hunting whip was in the back seat of my truck. Stood there in the muck and cracked that whip - turned the herd back from the road- helped the boys herd those cows back behind their fence. Tied the whip onto broken wire to hold it together - helped the boys repair the fence.
Those Mennonite boys appreciated the help. What did they say? You hunt with ******? I said yes and I also had a farm down the road - I was their neighbor.
They said - hey - y’all hunt some of our land over on ***** road. I said - that’s a beautiful place and we sure do appreciate you letting us hunt there. Y’all are very generous.
They said - well, we appreciate you helping get those heifers back, if they’d gotten out on the road there might have been an accident.
Now THAT’s good landowner relations - and it’s also just plain good manners to help out a neighbor in need.
All sportsmen have GOT to be good ambassadors and we’ve got to kick out the bad apples.
My post wasn’t intended to excuse any bad behavior on the part of a hunter - merely to point out that newspaper articles rarely get the facts straight. I don’t know what the truth is about that incident but I do hope everything turns out well.
The shame of it all is that all that land will be lost to development anyway.
