Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting National Forest Land and Outfitter Camps: Hunting Etiquette?

I'd leave if that was the case and you were polite. I've never hunted in a tree stand (personal preference) but have hunted out of vacated blinds. I'd not leave a blind that you vacated on public land. There are guides that build some dam nice blinds and they know that they need to be the first one in it if they want to hunt out of it.

The law is not on the side of the person that hung it, but rather the person who is in it.

I would say that if it's my property and I'm doing nothing wrong, the law is on my side. If you got there first, you get to hunt the spot and I can't blame you for getting in an empty stand. That being said, I would want to get my stand and go somewhere else with it.

I'd throw them in the water but for fear game would get injured.

A 'stray' bullet will cut the chain pretty easily. Then they can be moved a little ways away where they might - and hopefully are - be hard to find. I even have some old lock I would donate to secure them to the bottom of a tree.


A few years back a UPS truck blocked me in. After waiting patiently for a while I got fed up. The UPS driver had left the keys in the ignition, engine running. I relocated the truck to a clear area about 60 yards away and threw the keys behind a box in the back.

Understood but once you vacate your property and don't take your property with you it becomes available for anyones' use. Just the way the law is up here to prevent one guy from allocating public property for one persons private refuge. Theoretically a guy could hang 25 stands over several miles and sew up a lot of public land.

The law is very clear and regardless of whether you agree with it or not doesn't change it. I've yet to come across a tree stand left on public land so apparently most folks understand the implications of vacating one.

I petty much try to avoid the vicinity of other hunting camps no matter who is in them. I figure there's more pressure there so I will go where the animals go to avoid that pressure.

However, if I did want to hunt near an outfitters camp on public land nothing would stop me from doing that. It is public land and the outfitter has no more right to it than I do. He has paid a fee for exclusive outfitting/guiding privileges NOT EXCLUSIVE HUNTING PRIVILEGES.

Tree stands are rare in Colorado Elk country, so it's not much of a problem. However, if I were to discover a tree stand on public land and I wanted to use it, I would consider that it has been abandoned and I would have every right to salvage it.

KC

I would agree up to a point, if the tree stand was actually "abandoned."

But not if a guy just left it up for a few days in a spot he was hunting. That's not "salvaging," there's another word for it.

Kind of on the other foot, but I know for fact that an outfitter or some of his staff that operates out of Gunnison went into a camp that had been left for others to use in the next season and took equipment and the notified the FS and they went in and took out what was left.

Smokey and saddlesore:

Interesting subject here. For the sake of debate, I'll turn things around from what I stated above.

Let's say an outfitter sets up a drop camp in late August, just before bow season. That camp is located remote from his base camp so it's not included within his 100 yard exclusive zone. He expects to put several hunters in that drop camp throughout the fall. So he leaves the camp in place for three months. I know that same Gunnison outfitter which ransacked the camp mentioned earlier does exactly that, and I know where some of his drop camps are located.

Now what happens if someone takes stuff from his drop camp? How's that different from what he did?

KC

If the FS goes in and removes stuff that is illegally left in the NF, they are enforcing the law, nothing more, nothing less.

If you or I, or anyone else does it, that's apples and oranges. You and I have no authority to enforce the law. So if we take someone else's property, it's stealing. If we take property that's left there illegally and for a spurious reason, then it's understandable, maybe even laudable. But it's still not ours to take, that job belongs to the FS.

If we take a guy's tree stand because he left it unattended for a few hours, that's just plain stealing, and it's wrong. Anyone can see that.

I'll turn it around and ask you the same question I asked before. If you see a guy poach a deer in the backcountry, are you going to attempt to detain him at gunpoint? If you see a drunk driver on the road, are you going to give chase and tell him to pull over?

No, you're going to call LE and let them do their job.

Smoke:

Good point. So the people that saddlesore mentioned who took stuff from someone's camp are thieves. Even if they notified LEOs later. Right?

KC

KC, you and I know nothing of what happened there or how it went down. But I do know this--if they took stuff, and notified LE about it later, then LE no doubt took the stuff off their hands.

I wouldn't call that stealing, and I wouldn't call them thieves.

On the other hand, if they kept the stuff, didn't mention that they had it and just notified LE that there was an illegal camp there, I don't think that's the right thing to do, and I doubt LE would think so either.

Do you?

Smoke:

You're right. We know none of the details regarding the incident that saddlesore mentioned except that he did say the camp was left there for someone else to occupy during a later season. What a disappointment for the second users when they arrived and discovered their camp was gone.

Thieving is obviously wrong. But where is the line drawn between theft and salvage? I guess that depends on how well an item is identified. If people are obviously planning on returning in a reasonable time, then whatever they left behind has not been abandoned and therefore cannot be salvaged.

But trashing the forest is also obviously wrong. Leaving a camp setup for months, leaving a tree stand in one place for months, setting artificial ground blinds and leaving them in place for months, are all examples of trashing the forest. It's the same as littering.

If an outfitter sets up a drop camp and leaves it there for three months, he is abusing his opportunity. The Forest Service limits the time that someone can stay at the same camp to two weeks. I think that's a good limit and I suppose that if someone were to leave one tree stand setup, or a camp, or an artificial ground blind for no more than two weeks it would be the same thing. I guess that would be OK with me.

Here's another issue to ponder. This fall I hope to get a second season deer tag for the same unit where I will be hunting elk during the third season. If I setup a camp just before 2nd season and leave it in place until after 3rd season then it will be there for over three weeks. Since that's longer than two weeks I should remove my camp after second season and set it up again before third season. What a PITA. It's the same as the incident that saddlesore mentioned. I think people were wrong to bother that camp. There's more than one way right way to look at a situation.

KC

That outfitter kept the equipment they took.I saw what the FS packed out.

Well, 14 days is 14 days, and technically you would be in violation of that regulation. However, I would assume that unless someone wanted to make an issue of it (a USFS LEO or another hunter complaining), no one would much care. I would simply query the District Ranger's Office and see if it is likely to be a problem. Chances are, they would say "go ahead" and they would have a reasonable explanation should someone else complain later. OTH, that forest or ranger district might have a "hard-ass" Recreation Officer or LEO. Finding this out in advance might avoid problems for you later on.

(Wish I had that problem!)

This is very interesting about outfitters and drop camps

http://outfittingbusinessforsale.net/?q=node/2

Then I agree with smokepole. They are thieves.

AND that thieving outfitter who ransacked someone else's camp also has some drop camps that he leaves in place for two or three months. How do you think he would feel if someone were to take some of his gear? What do you think he would do? He would scream that thieves had stolen his property even though they have done just what he did.

KC

I have had both good and bad experiences with outfitters on NF land. Some of them are great and polite.

Others, are not, to say the least. I damn near got into a fist fight in Idaho one time with an outfitter on "his" forest.

Regardless, I try to give the camps a fair buffer when I am hunting. They were there first, just as if it was a private party camping there. If I know there's elk close to their camp, I will hunt fairly close by though.

In Idaho, it's illegal to leave a portable stand up overnight. Permanent stands on public land are 1st come, 1st served. That doesn't mean the guy who put it up won't cause you problems, though.

Public land is just that and gear left on it is public as well. If the first guy to hang a tree stand on a water hole owned the place we'd all be hunting gophers. That's not to say it's cool to mess wth another guy's kit during the season. But here in AZ, you see old stands hanging for years.

I've sat in somebody else tree stand on public land before. Had they shown up I would have gotten out.

Common courtesy goes a long way in all aspects of life.