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Wyoming is 50% federal surface, 77% federal interest lands, another large percentage of state lands, there is no shortage of hunting access. I know of one ranch that gives the public walk in access to a huge area of state lands. But the hunters don’t want to walk and sued to drive across the private lands.
@holy-cow Up until I was in High School my father never denied access to the Flint River through our property to anyone who ASKED. However, when they decided that the chain and padlock on the gate did not apply to them and drove through the wooden gates he reversed that policy. He had some gates built of 2 inch steam piping and anchored the post 3 feet in the ground in concrete. We had a couple of bent gates with nice automobile paint on them.
My father worked at the airport at home and would some times come home at midnight to find the gate open and the cows out. He would roll me out of bed and we would round them up and put them back.
I appreciate your problem.
Andy
@mightymoe Been my experience with most hunters if they can get there without an exhaust pipe between their legs, they won??t bother, which leaves a lot of places hardly touched and that has worked out pretty darn well for me.
Willy@dougie Interesting. In Montana corner hopping is against State law. Wardens issue corner hoppers a trespassing ticket. Maybe a maximum fine of a couple of hundred dollars and confiscation of the game animal. No one’s ever elevated it to Federal Court yet. Billionaire ranchers are buying up checkerboard ranches every where. The Wilke brothers from Texas just bought a ranch south of Great Falls for over $44 million. They don’t run cows just lock it up and hire cowboys to patrol it to keep out trespassers. Ted Turner owns a huge ranch south of Bozeman that had the most prime elk hunting ground in Montana. He’s running bison on it and it’s locked up.
You can make alot of money selling access to hunters, but it’s pocket change to guys like Wilkes and Turner.
The airspace argument sounds kind of flimsy to me, especially if it’s examined through the same lense as flying a drone over someone’s property.
Hard to tell who the badguy is here because I find it hard to believe a hunter would rather screw around with a ladder than simply ask the landowner for access.
Are the ranch owners actually hunting clubs, or ranchers who sell hunting rights, and want exclusive use of the public land?
.@bill93 Ted Turner and the Wilkes are just rich snobs that don’t want anyone hunting “their” game animals.
Is ted turner even still alive? I thought he was 70 years old 30 years ago?
- Robert Edward Turner III is an American entrepreneur, television producer, media proprietor, and philanthropist. He founded the Cable News Network, the first 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television, which later became TBS. WikipediaBorn: November 19, 1938 (age 83 years), Cincinnati, OHSpouse: Jane Fonda (m. 1991??2001), Jane Shirley Smith (m. 1965??1988), Julia Gale Nye (m. 1960??1964)Organizations founded: CNN, Turner Broadcasting System, MOREChildren: Laura Turner, Robert Edward Turner IV, Beau Turner, Rhett Turner, Jennie Turner
They can do this if they’re really interested….
- Posted by: @bill93
If the hunters didn’t step foot on the land, I don’t see that any damage was done.
It’s not totally without some reason. If access of this type to the landlocked public land can be restricted then the only way to access it is through the adjacent privately owned ranch. That would effectively give the ranch owner exclusive control over hunting on that public land. Such control would enhance the value of the ranch land. Breaking the control reduces value. So the ranch owner does have skin in the game. We could end up with a ruling regarding implied easement rights to access landlocked parcels
What kind of idiots leave themselves landlocked? LOL
- Posted by: @fairbanksls
What kind of idiots leave themselves landlocked? LOL
Should have called a surveyor…
@norman-oklahoma
I’m more worried that the newspaper doesn’t know how to spell Corner.
Crossing a coroner sounds mystical and other worldly though….Hmmmm
Makes me want to break out singing Woodie Guthrie’s ‘This Land is my Land, this land is your land’.
WillyColin Kaepernick was born 20 years after Woodie Guthrie died. I prefer rock music.
A reasonable solution would be for the ranch owner to have impenetrable barriers installed such that a two-inch wide gap is left over the “corner”. Perhaps about 30 feet high and somewhat flimsy near the top. Extending along each fence line of the ranch owner to an extent that going around them would clearly be trespass.
Sounds foolish, doesn’t it. So is corner hopping.
“Landlocked public lands” leads me to ponder a few things. Are public lands really land locked? It would seem to me that there would have to be some sort of prescriptive easement available to access said landlocked property.
I’ve been a hunter for 30 years, hunting both public and private property (with permission) and without knowing all the details, if I were a rancher with grazing livestock surrounding the land locked public lands, I would definitely be concerned about my livestock potentially being injured or killed by stray rifle rounds.
I ran into a situation bow hunting on public land once where I shot a nice buck on public land with my compound bow. It was a near miss lung shot and the deer took off and jumped a fence onto private land, when I approached the fence, the blood trail continued on the other side, so I went to the neighboring property and knocked on the door to the house seeking permission to pick up on the blood trail and recover the buck, surprisingly, the landowner flipped out on me, told me to leave the property and never come back. To my surprise, the next day I was going through a closed FB group for the town and there was a picture of my buck, gutted and hanging from a tree, my uniquely colored carbon fiber Broad headed arrow stabbed into the ground with a message thanking the “irresponsible hunter” for helping him fill his freezer for the winter.
We always recommend exactly what you did, and if the response is as you’re describing, send these aholes an Interesting discussion with a ga.e Warden to explain how they bagged and didnt tag it. Out here in the West, the GW are serious about those Infractions and will pursue all resources to punish and educate. Facebook evidence would have been the nail in their stupid coffin for sure.
Sucks you lost that animal, sucks more they got away with a crime…maybe they got wasting disease but from the sound of it they didnt have many brains to begin with…
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