I'm sure that I'm not the only person using Adobe Acrobat to mark up color photos to illustrate various conditions more easily and effectively than a map would convey. Here's a case in point,
Recently, as I was marking lines for fence construction along a couple of sides of a tract, I noticed that one of the adjacent landowners was using a driveway / jeep trail across the tract to access his camp building on an adjacent tract. The "driveway" was most likely a segment of a pasture road that was in place when the two adjacent parcels were created and the adjacent tract didn't require the use of it for access, except as a convenience since it was there and didn't require any additional work on his part to improve it.
To show my client the situation, I took the photo below, oriented so that the camera was looking right down the common line to make the boundary easy to draw in the photo. and used this as an attachment to a quick email report suggesting that it might be a good idea when the equipment operator was clearing the line for the proposed fence by scraping off brush and pushing surface rock to the side, to just clear a way on the adjacent owner's side of the line also for him to drive to his camp the next time he showed up at the property. It struck me as a neighborly gesture that would cost about fifteen minutes of machine time and head off some possible future argument.
The key, was just showing what the situation was as easily as possible and, since a single picture can be worth a lot of words, this was what I sent:
Nice job of depicting the situation.
Meanwhile, I am frequently amazed at what some people view as desired recreational pursuits. Thousands of acres of sagebrush and nasty critters does not appeal to me for my idle hours. I can see where metropolitan residents could go into the reverse of claustrophobia under such conditions. Being so far from a Starbucks could lead to dehydration for cubical rats on vacation.
a picture says more than a thousand words.
Holy Cow, post: 421743, member: 50 wrote: ...I can see where metropolitan residents could go into the reverse of claustrophobia under such conditions..
I've had a number of non-surveyor buddies over the years that took up golfing (prairie pool I call it) for "fresh air and exercise". I always declined their invitation for me to join them. Golfing just seemed to leave me cold after crawling through the great outdoors all week long. I guess to each his own favorite flowers and poisons.
If the road existed before the easement it's a good example of why the road should be called in the description.
MightyMoe, post: 421751, member: 700 wrote: If the road existed before the easement it's a good example of why the road should be called in the description.
Not really. There was a road easement dedicated to serve Tract 6 when the thousands of acres were subdivided into the sort of "hunting tracts" that you see in the photo and there is a road that can be driven to access Tract 6 within that road easement. This "driveway" is just a remnant of a pasture road that was in place before the subdivision that has no easement rights associated with it. The sporadic, seasonal land use and the lack of either (a) necessity or (b) exclusive adverse use would eliminate any of the typical alternate scenarios.
I have used a phone app to similarly mark up photos. I was amazed at how well people (customers and lawyers) responded to it. Surveyors are used to looking at and understanding drawings, but everyone is used to photos.
Kent McMillan, post: 421696, member: 3 wrote: To show my client the situation, I took the photo below, oriented so that the camera was looking right down the common line to make the boundary easy to draw in the photo. and used this as an attachment to a quick email report suggesting that it might be a good idea when the equipment operator was clearing the line for the proposed fence by scraping off brush and pushing surface rock to the side, to just clear a way on the adjacent owner's side of the line also for him to drive to his camp the next time he showed up at the property. It struck me as a neighborly gesture that would cost about fifteen minutes of machine time and head off some possible future argument.
Great post, so did the owner agree to your suggestion?
Kent has posted pictures of parts of Texas with much more appeal than this "camp". This looks like the part that Oklahoma sent back.
paden cash, post: 421749, member: 20 wrote: ve had a number of non-surveyor buddies over the years that took up golfing (prairie pool I call it) for "fresh air and exercise".
Real men golf with lead, and gunpowder..... Jus sayin'...
FL/GA PLS., post: 421787, member: 379 wrote: Great post, so did the owner agree to your suggestion?
Yes, it was an easy call as far as he was concerned. He even moved a water trough that the two tracts had been sharing entirely onto the adjoining tract since he didn't need it, having installed a better water system on the ranch he'd reassembled.
Mark Mayer, post: 421789, member: 424 wrote: Kent has posted pictures of parts of Texas with much more appeal than this "camp". This looks like the part that Oklahoma sent back.
Believe it or not, there are some magnificent mule deer that are perfectly happy on that sparse range. I'll grant you that the land down in the flats isn't as scenic as that on the elevated ground overlooking it:
Larry Best, post: 421784, member: 763 wrote: I have used a phone app to similarly mark up photos. I was amazed at how well people (customers and lawyers) responded to it. Surveyors are used to looking at and understanding drawings, but everyone is used to photos.
Yes, in my opinion, the preparation of surveyor's reports is a generally disregarded field of endeavor. At any rate, most of the reports I've seen recently have been much worse than the maps they accompanied. When you consider that most clients and their attorneys relate to words and and written explanations much better than they do to graphical abstractions, the neglect of report writing skills is a major lapse in professional surveying practice.
Holy Cow, post: 421743, member: 50 wrote: Meanwhile, I am frequently amazed at what some people view as desired recreational pursuits. Thousands of acres of sagebrush and nasty critters does not appeal to me for my idle hours.
Believe it or not, there are some very healthy looking Whitetail and Mule Deer that flourish in that landscape. Deer hunting is a major supplement to income on many ranches and some ranches have been converted to wildlife management areas surrounded with 8-ft fence to improve the hunting income.
What happened in that case was a developer bought about 7,000 acres of land for probably about $75.00 per acre and subdivided it into tracts with an average size of probably about 200 acres - from memory, I don't have the file handy - and then sold them to folks who thought it would be cool to actually BUY a piece of land to hunt on instead of just leasing hunting rights. I don't recall the exact markup on the price of the subdivided land, but it was probably more than 100%, so the developer stood to make money, both on land sales for cash and on the interest he collected when bought on time.
Had three Whitetail come strolling within 50 feet of where I'm sitting yesterday morning. Probably the last of a dozen or more that seem to love my yard. If I want to harvest one the simplest way is to go for a drive after dark with my lights off. Most people do the same thing with their lights on. The local sheriff's weekly report lists plenty of reports of such events. I would leave the lights off so I can't watch what happens as I'm hearing the THUMP. I might try to swerve otherwise and merely injure one. That would bother me.
Once upon a time, there were deer crossing my 2 ac back and forth from water to food on a regular basis and on a regular basis and at least once a year there was fresh road kill in the middle of the night.
Then new neighbors moved in all around me with dogs.
For 15yrs can't walk out of the house without dogs barking.
Deer are taking another path these days.
We see deer around our house frequently. It's well inside the developed area of town, one street and a quarter mile to the nearest wooded creek. As the winter snow melted away our back yard looked like the deer's litter box.
As a rule, you should not expect to collect substantial sums of money for killing deer in your back year near town. That ranch I mentioned is about 5 hrs. West of any city and, as a practical matter, mainly accessible by air. The killing of deer with high-powered rifles is evidently something that the folks who live in the remote cities long to do and are willing to empty their wallets in the course of doing. I can't explain it.
Kent McMillan, post: 421696, member: 3 wrote:
The key, was just showing what the situation was as easily as possible
Would the current Google earth image have shown a driveway of that sort?
If so, you could include the relevant portion of the survey superimposed over the image.
rfc, post: 422608, member: 8882 wrote: Would the current Google earth image have shown a driveway of that sort?
If so, you could include the relevant portion of the survey superimposed over the image.
There is 50-cm resolution aerial imagery available, but preparing a map overlaid on it would have been considerably more work and wouldn't have shown the situation as well as the ground level photo did. That photo showed the rocks and brush that would require machinery to move and scrape away. All the aerial shows is that about 400 ft. of line would need to be cleared to make a new driveway on the adjacent tract to access the camp building and that fact can be more easily reported in words.
