What to do... if anything

[jayhawk]

That’s like sending a bottle of whiskey to some random person because there are people that cut them off in traffic that you have nothing to do with. Doesn’t really make sense.

Edit: btw random person here and I like Woodford

 

[Fireflyfishing]

This is why I like ONX. I can physically show the harasser where I’m standing…not on his land.

 

[KyleR1985]

This was kind of my thinking except I'm really not worried about getting permission on his land. The next day we killed a second antelope off the same section. I was just hoping to open his eyes a little that we're not ALL bad.

Lots of great info/ideas in this thread, but it seems the majority say do nothing as he doesn't deserve it.

If I could go back I would have recorded the conversation when I pulled my phone out to show him where we came from.... hind sight is 20/20

I know you didn’t intend to get access.

What I meant is that there’s a non zero chance that if you go out of your way to be nice and positive, you raise the ceiling on potential outcomes. There is a cost (100 bucks maybe and some time). It’s just low.

The divide you’re potentially bridging is getting wider every day. That feller isn’t a dog. Rubbing his nose in his shit will just get shit on both of you.

 

[roadrunner]

Let it go and move on. I'm quite certain you have better things to occupy your thoughts and time with.

 

[Coastal101]

So as a landowner, that has had the same issue as the one in the original post with out of area hunters. If I had acted like that and was proven wrong and the hunter decided to send me a bottle of nice whiskey, there is a good chance that they would get permission in follow up years if they asked.

 

[Coveyleader]

I've dealt with this type before, they are azsholes and won't change. Typical western rancher types> Always accusations first, hell with the second scenario on how you got there. I've been in some bad situations with one guy here in Colorado, and his guides at the time for almost 10 straight years. It never gets better. Save your gift, and call the WGF and tell them you'd like to start hunter harassment charges against him.

 

[Rich M]

We were in WY and adjacent landowner went out of his way to give us a hard time. You buy OnX and spend all this time & effort to do the right thing and some "dude" goes out of his way to give you crap.

Nothing you do will change his attitude.

Maybe you should send @Coastal101 the whiskey and see what he comes up with?

 

[rookieforever33]

You already showed him that not all hunters are bad by deescalating when you could have held your ground. The game warden reinforced that he was wrong.

 

[tall]

Don’t reward bad behavior.

If anything, sending him the whiskey is likely to reinforce in his mind that you must have trespassed to get to where you were.

I agree with this. Rewarding him is likely to just reinforce his own opinion about himself, that he is right and everyone else is wrong.

 

[TaperPin]

Me and my boys, 21 & 25, just got back from an antelope hunt in central Wyoming. We had a blast and both boys took great antelope.

The second day we were there, we parked on the side of the highway and hiked into a section of state/BLM land. We got towards the back of the area and noticed a truck up on the rim above us on the private land. He proceeded to drive off the rim and come barreling towards us, once he got there he started screaming at us that we had to get off his land, which we were well over 100 yds away from. He proceeded to yell that we "had to have trespassed to get to where we were at. I assured him that we did not and tried to explain to him where we had parked, he was having none of it and told us to "get the ()&* out", and he was calling the CO, to which I told him "please do and tell him to meet me at my truck off the hwy". Not wanting to escalate any further I decided to just leave, and I would call the CO myself when we returned to the truck.

On the way back to the truck my son shot a nice antelope buck, again we were dead in the middle of 3000 acres of public land that I knew we were good to be on because of the homework I did prior to season talking with the local wardens and state police.

We were about 150 yds from the truck when the warden happened to be driving by so he pulled in and helped us get over the fence and proceeded to check in my sons antelope. He said the land owner had called him, and he assured the landowner that we had not did anything wrong, and the L/O apologized to the warden about the way he handled the situation.

So here's my question

While getting yelled at by the L/O he stated that he hates hunting season because people are consistently trespassing on his land, and I can see his frustration if that is the case, some guys are lazy and go the easy route. I was thinking of sending the L/O a letter and bottle of good whiskey, apologizing for shi**y hunters on behalf of the hunters that do their due diligence and everything "by the book". What do you think? Should I do that or just let it go and forget about it?

Rich

I’d just let it go. Trying to be reasonable with unreasonable people isn’t going to move the needle even a little bit to change them. Every crotchety land owner I knew as a kid was just as crotchety their entire lives, and folks who live here think of making fun of non residents as a sport. Your well intentioned gift would become the butt of jokes for years to come.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

Not to get geopolitical, but sending this guy a bottle of whiskey - at this point in time - would be like sending Iran $300 million and expecting them to be our friends.

In my youth, I was a witness in a family lawsuit that stemmed from neighbors refusing to respect our property lines when we bought a piece of property that had been neglected for a decade (the previous owners were going through an ugly divorce). The neighbors were used to treating it as their own. We had to throw literally dozens of people off the land every year for the first five years. Early one October, when the leaves were still on the trees, some of their teenagers nearly shot my little brother while poaching a doe on our land (they didn’t see him as both were stalking the doe from different angles). My dad threw them off the land at gunpoint, but didn’t involve the game warden. A year or two later, one of their bear dogs got loose while they were illegally hunting bears on our land and it attacked my dad while he was blackpowder hunting (the dog was guarding a deer it had killed) and mauled him pretty badly before he killed it. After winning a criminal trial in which my dad was charged with malicious wounding of an animal (the prosecutor was related by blood and marriage to the dog owner), both sides ended up suing each other civilly. After months of depositions and legal wrangling, we got to court.

The crusty old judge told the lawyers that when he was in law school, he was taught that lawsuits involving “dogs, kids, hunting, or land boundaries” were toxic and to be avoided at all costs. “Gentlemen, your clients’ cases involve all four. I advise you to settle.” The old judge - assisted by the insurance company, which insured both parties - then forced a near equal settlement on both parties. We haven’t exactly been on great terms these past thirty years, but at least it wrapped up the overt hostility.

And, it did wrap up the poaching problem we had previously dealt with ourselves because it was now a documented matter. Most of the county seems to have decided that my dad was violent and angry and best avoided. And the local authorities forced the game warden to take notice of the situation, which helped deal with the rest. It didn’t exactly make for a great place to grow up…

If I learned anything from that episode, it was not to resort to self-help (throwing people off your land at gunpoint) and to get low-level authorities involved early (as the OP did and my dad failed to do because his conduct opened him up to an assault charge). Staying calm and maintaining the legal and moral high ground is important.

But there’s a real detriment in rewarding bad behavior. If I ran into that landowner in a social context, I would be polite, civil, and try to find common ground. If he responded positively, so would I. But showing kindness or generosity to a bully or jerk is often perceived as weakness. When people are used to treating land that isn’t theirs as their own, things can get pretty ugly because being persistent and unpleasant is often enough to maintain de facto control over it.

 

[intunegp]

So as a landowner, that has had the same issue as the one in the original post with out of area hunters. If I had acted like that and was proven wrong and the hunter decided to send me a bottle of nice whiskey, there is a good chance that they would get permission in follow up years if they asked.

So after you wrongly harassed a hunter who was acting legally and within his rights, if he chose not to press charges THEN further kissed your ass, you would tuck your tail and extend an olive branch in return? I would hope so, and I would hope as a landowner you would simply strive to not act like that.

I would not want any association with someone that acted like that. He assumed the worst about you and I think it would be fair to look at him in the same light. What happens when your new buddy gives you verbal permission then calls the warden back out while you're on his land?

 

[MuleyFever]

Send him a map and highlight the public land on it.

 

[hunt1up]

Do you have a dog? I'd send him a dog turd.