Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Property line hunting etiquette?

Found a treestand right on the border(+/- 10 ft) of my property while doing some scouting this morning. Don't know the neighbors because it's a church camp and I'm not particularly worked up over it since I have plenty of land to hunt but was curious to hear what folks think about line hunters and if there is some understood distance one should keep from bordering properties.

You need to go out and get a couple bags of party balloons. Blow them up and tie them all over the place on your side of the property. I saw it done once and we still talk about it.

Most of the towns around me have passed ordinances that prohibit hunting on private land without the owner's written permission.

Since many of the landowners will simply not grant permission to hunt on their property for various reasons (i.e. they are anti-hunting, they have accident liability concerns, selfishness etc.), I have developed what I call the "Robin Hood Approach."

I just take my bow and hunt their property anyhow!

In some cases (if the property is big enough) I hang a relatively cheap tree stand that I'm willing to sacrifice if necessary, but most of the time (after I have identified a high deer traffic location), I simply sneak onto the property before daylight, set up a natural ground blind and ambush them if I can.

I only take high kill probability shots (25 yards or less) where I can be assured of a quick recovery and most of the time I remove the deer from the property before gutting it.

Since a first time offense for trespassing here is a verbal warning and a $100 fine thereafter, the financial risk associated with using the Robin Hood Approach is minimal.

BTW...........I never hunt a piece of property that the landowner hunts himself nor will I ever encroach on another hunter's stand location under any circumstances.

I only select properties that normally go unused for months at a time and where the landowner has absolutely no idea I'm even out there.

What's that expression again...."no harm, no foul"?

I thing it applies very well here.......but as always............. YMMV.

What's that expression again...."no harm, no foul"?

Well, if you bothered to read the post, my problem was not that he was hunting the line, but rather that he was hunting/shooting in MY DIRECTION! But I guess to some that's no big deal. And if fact just [bleep] is just another city dweller that only comes around durning hunting season. The rest of the year they are nowhere to be found - like when there is work to be done on the trails, or feed lots, or helping out the neighbors that are older, but I am sure that you wouldn't understgand that.

I found a ground blind one year about 10 yards off the property line. I left a note with my contact info, permission to hop the fence if he needed while tracking a wounded or retrieving a dead deer, a few words informing him there was another ground blind 100 yards west of him and please don't shoot that direction, and a good luck wish.

Fine with me. Nary a problem. Saw him over there later that week and waved a hello. He waved back.

I found a ground blind one year about 10 yards off the property line. I left a note with my contact info, permission to hop the fence if he needed while tracking a wounded or retrieving a dead deer, a few words informing him there was another ground blind 100 yards west of him and please don't shoot that direction, and a good luck wish.

Fine with me. Nary a problem. Saw him over there later that week and waved a hello. He waved back.

While I can't know exactly what tone of voice and/or body language you were using when you said



I can only assume that the way you wrote it means that you were rather forceful when you delivered that message. That said, I can understand how the guy receiving the message may have been pissed, but that doesn't excuse him (or whomever it was) in any way from firing shots into your stand.

Now that I have that out of the way, I'm just wondering if you considered that the window in the neighboring stand you were/are so upset with was/is merely there to observe game that might be headed toward the neighboring property from your direction? And even further, that they might be able to tell when someone was/is hunting your stand - and of course if/when you're not there at the same time, a shot in that direction wouldn't be 'dangerous'?

As to the original question about etiquette, I guess I would prefer a neighbor not set up a stand on their property line so close to a stand that I already had set up there, but it's not like I have any say about it, and definitely wouldn't want anyone trying to tell me where/how I might erect a stand on my property. I guess that means that if it happens, so be it ... just let it go ... move your own stand if you don't like it. It's not like you have any 'right' to the stand location just because yours was there first.

Again, I realize we're talking "etiquette" and not "rights" ... but I think it would be just as poor a display of etiquette to try to tell a neighbor that they shouldn't put a stand in a certain location on their own property - and that's regardless of whether it's the property owner who's hunting it, or some "city slicker" that only shows up during hunting season.