Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting How do you stop poachers

Nosler Ballistic Tip.....

Post the living heck out of the properties.

Video or trailcams positioned where vehicles are normally left. Both for patterning of when/where/what/whom and for evidence of trespassing and thus poaching.

Prosecute vigorously.

And, get creative re: other means as well. Don't do anything that would get you killed, or potentially harm anyone else (as that'd get you in legal trouble REALLY fast), but there are ways of mechicide (sic) ...

The "greenies" have a great little book (if you can overlook the text/diatribe and just go for the useful pointers): web page

I know how frustrating poachers can be. I have changed hunt clubs because of them but obviously you don't have that choice. Short term you don't really want an armed confrontation. Remember, they can damage treestands, vehicles, etc. too. I would suggest what the landowners(farmers) did in North Carolina. Go to County Commissioners & State Legislatures thru farm associations & try to have more ridgid trespassing laws passed. I'm sure farmers must be having the same problem. It's time to get organized. I hunt in Texas a lot. You stand a better chance of murdering someone there than trespassing on a deer lease & going free.

If you live on the land it would be harder because they could retaliate since they know where you live. If it is just hunting land and you don't reside there. Find where they park.
Break a window and toss in a safety flare. They will find somewhere else to poach I betcha!!

I've tried a bunch of stuff over the years. My current tack is the following:

1) I made a laundry list of everything I'd directly witnessed.
2) I put it all in a letter to the game warden.
3) Included in the letter were a sample letter of permission, a topo with the boundary lines shown, and list of all the neigbhors and their lines.
4) Suggestions on where to hunt for the vermin.
5) Make sure you follow this up with face-2-face meetings, etc. Also repeat as needed every two seasons or so.

BTW: The secret to this is the inherent threat that a copy of all your carefully prepared correspondence will end up going to the state mucky mucks if nothing ever gets done.

If you document an "opportunity rich environment" and open your arms to the warden, he will probably come in and hunt it. They really do love taking 2-legged coyotes, and making it easier for them improves their chances of success. In my state, bagging a 2nd or 3rd strike offender is especially prized. My next door neighbor is a 2-strike offender. He would sooner rip his own head off as get caught on my land again. That would buy him a 2-year ticket to the pokey. You can bet the local warden would love his scalp on his belt too.


Another handy tactic I've seen work: find yourself the meanest biker you can find that likes to bow hunt. Give him permission to hunt in exchange for hunting your 2-legged coyotes. Tell him he can hunt it as long as you never catch a poacher on the property. Then spread news of your pact in every likely venue in the county (bars, feed stores, etc.) That's how the local real estate agent, keeps his property vermin-free.

You're primarily talking tresspassers. I don't like to get into confrontation with someone that is already a lawbreaker, and has a gun. You might remember 2 years ago a tresspasser shot 6 hunters in Wisconsin.

We had problems with tresspassing and decided to incorporrate the land into "Game Farm" which required some paperwork, a small fee, and posting Game Farm signs around the perimeter. When we did this, nearly all the trespassing stop- I think that the trespassers reasoned that there would be more feet on the ground and the fines heavier for having a gun on "gamefarm". Game wardens are probably more likely to chase down tresspassers on "game farm" than on simple private property.

You might also try tieing 2'x3' blaze orange fabric to trees at intervals on the property Come sun up the trespassers see the hordes of other hunters and generally sneak back out. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

We can place a stand in a tree on public land, but if it's left there, its free for the taking. One can actually be charged with littering for leaving an unattended stand up. As to building a stand on public land, that's a definite no no. Really gets me wound up when I run a newly sharpend chain into a nail when cutting firewood. One can be fined for driving nails into trees on public land. Ok on private land, but not on public. 1Minute

The same way you stop deer.............

I am a retired Texas Game Warden and My first station was in South Texas , a Highway Patrolman called me one night about 2AM and wanted to meet me it was during deer season . I met him and he told me that he had stopped a speeder running about 85mph about an hour ago and when he stopped this guy he hands were bloody , his pants and knees were all skinned up and this guy was scared to death.
he started questioning him and the guy told him he was driving south and spotted some deer feeding under a vapor light alongside the hwy next to a big butane tank and started thinking that it would be easy to shoot one of these deer and load it up and take it home and he lived another 200 miles from where he was at the time.
all he had was a 22 and so he turned his car around and went back and shot one of the deer and it ran off into the darkness. he parked his car alongside the road by a cattleguard and got a small flashlight and went to where he had shot the deer and found some blood and started following the blood trail he had to go about 100 yds into some brush and still finding blood he was walking down a small ranch road when he heard this voice telling him to stop and lay his rifle down or he would be shot .the voice was behind him so he laid his gun down and the voice told him to step back away from the gun and he did and then to get down on his hands and knees . the man came up behind him and stuck a 45 auto against his head and ask him if he wanted the same thing to happen to him that happenned to the deer he said" no please no" and then the man told him to start crawling down this gravel road back toward the highway and so he started crawling .
He told the Highway patrolman that the man followed him almost to the highway ,and he crawled about 100 yds. said he stopped him close to where the vapor light was showed him the pistol and told him if he ever stopped there again he would use it on him . and left . he told the trooper that he waited until he could not hear his footsteps anymore and got up and ran about 25 yds to the cattleguard and got in his car and was heading south when he met the trooper on the highway running 85 mph.
I knew the place where it happened at and about a week went by and I was drinking cofee in a cafe and this landowner came in and sat down we visited a few minutes and I had to ask him about the incident , he just kept drinking his coffee and didn't say anything we talked about a couple other things and he got up to leave and he walked around the table and leaned down and whispered to me " I don't think He will be back in this county." i laughed and told him i certainly agreed. This landowner was a sniper back in WW2 and was very weird anyway but there was not a doubt that it happened.
Navarro

Sure as hell does happen ol bud. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I have found that it is a lot better if they never see you though. Then they ain't exactly sure what happened but sure as hell know they don't ever want it to happen again.


BCR

When I was much younger my father knew a farmer who owned land along a highway. Behind his property was a large area of Crown (read public) land. The only way to access the Crown land was to either trespass or to walk about 3 miles in.

Every duck season on opening day there apparently would be several people who thought they should trespass in order to reach some ponds located on the public land. (As you might expect the local farmers looked on the public land as their own private hunting preserve.) One opening morning about 10 a.m. when we were done for the morning the farmer said he wanted to go for a drive along the highway to check for trespassers. I should point out that all of the farms along there were properly posted for No Trespassing.

The farmer went to where 2 or 3 cars were parked along the highway. He proceeded to place pieces of broken bottles in front of the tires, broke off some aerials and side view mirrors.

Also he found a dead raccoon on the road, picked it up and then tried to throw it through the side window of one parked car while my father was driving at about 50 mph.

His comment? Likely no one will be back next weekend! (This was based on past experience.)

I have to admit I never hunted there on another opening of duck season. Was afraid I might end up in jail if someone went to the police.

And the sound of a single action hammer being cocked while the muzzzle is pressed into an ear can change a "No English" response into some fast talking, English speaking, explaining real fast too. You just need to come up on them quiet and unexpected, talk softly, and look like you mean it.

Back in the mid 70's we had a nice 1000 acre of mesquite jungle and thickets leased in west central, Coleman County Texas and paid a premium price at that time of $10 an acre for the year round hunting rights. Average Lease at that time was going for $2-$4 an acre. It had a big semi dry creek running north to south about 2/3's of the way across it....the only water course for miles. We had put up a bunch of box blinds ...and knew the place was being hunted hard during the week from the gut piles and tire tracks. On a biz trip I stopped off on a wednesday afternoon, parked where my truck was not visible from any of the fence lines - owner occupied property on the north and on the east, county road on the west, cattle ranch to the south...and eased my way across the mesquite jungle wearing street shoes slacks and a dress shirt without ever cutting a road and slipped into a tower blind overlooking the north east corner of the lease about 5-600 yasrds away where I thought all the poachers were coming from thru a locked and chained gate. About midafternoon a pickup came thru the supposedly locked gate -some AH's had cut our chain and put their own lock on it - and listened to the truck run around up and down the creek bed in a move and listen mode for about an hour, then they made the mistake of going down the west road that lead to the county road about 30 minutes before sundown. I hung out the window of the tower blind wearing a white dress shirt, waved my hat at them and pointed my scoped rifle at them as they used some binoculars to check out all the other feeder washes running downhill from north and west of me...and only after they cranked up and looked south in my direction did they get the "messge"...I nearly fell out of the 15'tall blind laughing watching them jump the low spots with 6' of air under the back wheels. When I got got back to town and called the sheriff - before cell phones in those days - and the master lease holder - who cussed me out for scaring folks and reminded me that I "needed" to call him anytime I was going to be on the property..it finally dawned on me ....Yep he was day leasing it mid week according to the Sheriff who called me later when the guys in the pickup called him to turn me in a week or so later.

Same Master Lease holder next year took our deposit checks 30 days before the due date without saying a word except that nothing like last year would happen again and we shook on it all round - it was great lease only 4 hours west of Dallas and we had first right to release it - and the AH leased the 1000 acres to some other guys and told them all our camp improvements, blinds and everything went with the lease...at least thats what they told us when 12 guys rolled up with the campers and equipment they had pulled 400 miles up from Houston opening weekend of dove season...we told them what had happened, went back to Dallas and cancelled all the postdated deposit checks after we pulled all the improvements off the place in one day ...but it took a 18 wheeler load to get everything from camp, and all the blinds in one pass.

I still won't spend a dime in Coleman County Texas , the Leasing Agents family was very very very prominent in the County! and passed all of the details of this incident along to the Chamber of Commerce who lists the landowners who have deer lease's available, the Sheriff's Office, the manager of the Bank in town where we had established an account to pay utilities with, and anybody else that would listen....with copies of the signed notarized Lease Agreement to anyone that wanted one. Sheriff took it to a local judge and said it was for sure a legal contract.

Still all in all I would not have shot at them unless they fired first and I was usuing a big scoped rifle, and the guns I saw were bare nekkid 30/30s and never let them get closer than 300 yards but made sure they saw me in broad daylight. I will always remember the sight of that pickup flying across the dry washes 6-7' in the air...never saw anybody else that season...went back only because the Sheriff told us to go back on the land after the judge had inspected our Lease Agreement as we had a written, signed, notarized lease contract that we had filed in the Cole County Courthouse records that spelled out exactly who did what, when what was to be paid and so on....and one of our hunters who was an attorney filed notice of intent to file a law suit against the Master Lease holder by contacting the local Bar Association looking for a correspondent Attorney to work with ...and mentioned his intent to include the Landowner as well and needed an Abstract Service to find the owner to serve ...who had allowed the Master Grazing & Hunting Rights holder to access about 10-15,000 of his acres. More than one way to skin an AH in small town Texas!! Life is too short to put up with AH's like that Leasing Agent....but Leasing is about the only way of life to hunt in Texas ...makes the Rockies looking better and better ...if I can grow enough lungs to get up and down <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
Ron

POACHER UPDATE

This weekend a poacher was driving down a logging road on our farm and accidentally ran over a piece of 1/2 decking full of nails that SOMEHOW ended up in a mudd hole He left his truck so we had it towed and impounded. man I sure do hate that.

Eight penny and roofing tacks are rough on goodyears

Don't ya love it when a plan comes together.......... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Don

Don't forget to put the dead fish under the seat. That'll be a reminder this spring.

Don't put a dead fish under the seat.

Grind the little guppy in the blender (puree' works wonderfully), and pour the shake into the outside defrost vents. It only takes a little of this "magic liquid" to make a very lasting impression...

The only way to remove the smell... is to recycle the steel... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

jd;

Very good going, and keep it up. Just, watch y'all's backsides... fences.... property.... poachers are general bastids in nearly all regards.

Now that's funny. Thanks for the one up VA. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Good move.