Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cattle guys, gate on BLM allotment on our dog walk

why not fix the gate rather then take a picture, it is public land if we can use it we should be responsible for maintaining it

It may be public land but the gate is someone else's property and it's not "the public's" responsibility to maintain it.

I tried that, it kept breaking.

Makes a pretty good rod for acetylene welding, also. It takes a high quality steel to extrude it that fine.

Unfortunately, not uncommon experience out here - and have seen worse.

It's not the public's responsibility to break it either, but they do. Or leave it open so the cattle get out, but they do.

Or as evidenced by the shotgun mark, and broken hinges in the OP photos, to shoot the latch chain off, or just drive through it to open it...but they did.

Or shoot up windmills, water tanks, and cattle troughs. But they do.

Or shoot an expensive registered Angus bull in my pasture. But they did that too.

I'm certainly glad to be done with ranching on public land.

Maybe so, but if you can fix it, why wouldn't you. It's not that hard.

Maybe if I knew the owner of the gate and knew he wouldn't mind me monkeying with it. If it was mine and I needed it to work right, meaning be easily opened and closed securely because the public had right-of-way, Id want to fix it myself and not depend on a total stranger to do it.

And then they bitch and moan about locked gates even on private land!

Sorry to hear that, all of that sucks. But it really has nothing to do with my comments, which were in response to a guy who said Geno, who wasn't even driving the road or using the gate, should have fixed it.

Do you fault him for not fixing it?

Not necessarily. The BLM builds many miles of fences for grazing allotments, including gates. The majority are just wire gates but in heavy use areas, good metal gates are sometimes used, too.

Folks have taken to stealing good metal gates. It happened at my grandparents land.
My suspicion is Hutterites that left the colony, but I can’t prove it.

Even better, BLM needs to get off their ass and maintain their fences.

I guess BLM has different policies for different regions.

Where I had BLM permits, you COULD apply for assistance which amounted to 40% of the materials, but you had to keep it maintained and it had to be built to their specifications. Their specs were just a common 5 wire ranch fence.

It's a typical occurrence here, to be honest; I've seen worse.

Yes, mostly between late May and late Sept. Been freezing most night since mid Sept, but we've had a warm spell last couple of weeks with daytime temps in the 70's and even a couple of 80's. Saw a gopher snake the other day, so snakes are still active.

Mostly when I'm with the wife we walk on the roads, this time of year (hunting season) they wear orange so some azzhat doesn't shoot thinking they're coyotes or deer.



The dogs spot the snakes before we do on occasion. They're always leashed, due to being whippets we don't want them to see a rabbit, coyote, deer, antelope, etc and be in the next county before dark so we usually can stop them before they get to close. They want to kill everything, so we have to watch them around snakes. Surprisingly, we've only seen one rattler in the 7 years we've been here, right off the back porch in the yard. He ded, and eaten.

Might be, the gate was bent some in the middle. Can't imagine why they'd want to push it open though, I've never seen any of the BLM gates here locked, and as I mentioned it had been closed with a flagpole clip and short chain.

Couple of the ranchers and hunters around here have been known to knock back a few. Who knows, maybe they closed the gate behind them, put the truck in gear, gave it some throttle, only to realize it was in reverse. That's why they had to tie it closed with baler twine?

Yeah, I had my old wife along with me (I left the young ones at home to stay pretty) and the hinge was loose in the post and would have needed to have a hole drilled to reset it. I didn't bring the drill, or a brace and bit, with me on our dog walk

Was in the passenger car too, or I'd have had some tie wire at least, and tools, if I'd have been in the truck. The whippets are spoilt though, don't ride in the back of trucks unless it's an emergency.

Well, we did drive in behind the gate to start our walk. The gate is right at the county road. Drove in maybe 20 yards to a wide spot so others might get by if needed and so we could U turn easily when leaving. Behind the gate is just one more obstacle for someone with bad intentions if we parked right on the county road in a remote area. The lazy no good sunsabishes would at least have to get out of their vehicle, open a gate, before they could check out our car for scheidt to steal.


Maybe one of the rancher types know the rules for BLM allotments.............who's responsible for the fence and gates? The allotment holder or BLM?

Actually kind of surprises that's a pipe gate. Most of them around here are barb wire gates. Might be since it's relatively popular for hunters they wanted one that's easy to open and, more importantly, close. Some folks still don't know how to operate a wire gate.

Oops, guess I should have read all the posts before replying and questioning above. I thought that might be the way maintenance worked around here too.