I set a corner with a rag tape

Holy Cow, post: 387647, member: 50 wrote: Mama Skunk and her youngun's named In and Out.

[MEDIA=youtube]bB0H_q810pg[/MEDIA]

RADAR, post: 387700, member: 413 wrote: !

I had to watch it to make sure there was a happy ending...

Just last night I let 4 dogs outside to pee at 3:30AM...and heard one helluva mess of fighting going on. I ran out there and could smell SKUNK...I though "aw hell" somebody got sprayed, but I guess they were lucky none of them had the "stank" upon their furry hides. I guess the skunk was traveling through on the other side of a tall wooden fence and when the dogs "hit" the fence he probably gave them a squirt but the fence protected them. If it had been 30' further down it would have been chain-link and I would have been scrubbing dogs with Dawn Detergent. 😉

I would worry about rabies. It's not normal for wild animals (especially with young) to approach humans in broad daylight like that.
Andy

It's less normal to stand around and let a family of skunks approach and sniff your feet.

[MEDIA=youtube]EaN7xuAIjXI[/MEDIA]

Black and white kitties... They know who is boss!

Ah, yes, the memories. Grabbing lunch in the huge cafeteria in the Student Union about 1972-73 when the dead skunk song came blasting over the speakers that normally played a bit more polite music during the lunch time of day.

Williwaw, post: 387639, member: 7066 wrote: Boss Surveyor instructed me to lay out a grid on 50' spacing and had me drag a rag tape using a compass for line and carried elevations as I went using a P-gun and fiberglass rod making a turn every 50' on those compass lines.

I can't think of what a P-gun might be

A p-gun is a hand level, the P is for Preliminary, as in "preliminary road" for logging and what not. At least that is how it was explained to me.

Williwaw, post: 387639, member: 7066 wrote: ...I'm also pretty sure there's no law against a property owner setting his own corners, though some might say he has the same client as the fellow that acts as his own attorney. But hey, that's his business and not mine.

I don't know on the issue of someone setting their own corners....but it seem fundamentally different than the defending yourself issue. You should absolutely have a right to defend yourself. But, what about an untrained layman setting his adjoiner's corner? (On the other hand, perhaps it is similar. Setting your own corner is like saying "Hey I am declaring this the limits of my property, and if you disagree, you should do something about it, or I will use it accordingly" type of thing.)

(I also didn't know what a p-gun was.)

Tom Adams, post: 388151, member: 7285 wrote: ...But, what about an untrained layman setting his adjoiner's corner?

Not too long ago I actually ran into an old geezer (?!) that saw us digging around with a pin finder and came out to "help". We were working in an older ('60s) rural plat with 5 and 10 acre lots. I was familiar with the original surveyor's work and his habit of NOT setting permanent pins is well known.

This old fellow showed us where his pin was located. I mentioned his memory was good. He replied he "ought to remember where its at" as he had set it himself 40 years ago. He told a story of him and the builder setting up an instrument (?) and measuring from the section line road with a steel tape. The distance would have been over 1000'. Cute.

After we found everything we could I looked at it on the screen and that pin was not that bad. I think it was probably less than 2' from record...and given the prevalent discord and disarray in the area...I called it a good point. No need to get picky after 40 years, right?

Williwaw, post: 387639, member: 7066 wrote: One of my first PC jobs was tasked to topo about 60 acres of the densest spruce covered land I'd ever laid eyes on. Could see maybe 20' if you were lucky. No way RTK (had I had it) or conventional was going to complete the job in a timely fashion. Boss Surveyor instructed me to lay out a grid on 50' spacing and had me drag a rag tape using a compass for line and carried elevations as I went using a P-gun and fiberglass rod making a turn every 50' on those compass lines. Took a while but worked well enough to topo the whole thing for 1' contours where none of that high tech gear would work. Learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes just got to go back to basics. I'm also pretty sure there's no law against a property owner setting his own corners, though some might say he has the same client as the fellow that acts as his own attorney. But hey, that's his business and not mine.

I often use a staff compass for running line, faster, lighter, and sufficiently accurate for timber land boundaries when the corner monuments already exist.

We have a boundary along a ridge wich is described by bearing and distance in Sections 19, 21, & 22 but in Section 23 the deed just calls out the ridge. I need to map the 20' wide ridge for calculating areas. We already have traverse control along the road which meanders back and forth across the ridge. So I used flo-pink laths for control points, a Sipe Sumner compass for directions, and our fancy new Disto for distances. First I had an inmate Fire Crew clear a 10' wide swath through the brush, I told the Fire Captain crew supervisor to just clear the ridge, stay on the ridge, I don't need it down to bare dirt (you have to tell them that, fire line is down to bare mineral dirt). Oh yeah, 3" minus on the trees. They are certified fellers so you want to be specific about not cutting down trees.

The Disto has a tripod and video screen, I put the cross hairs on the pink lath and shot. It really likes the pink lath, missing the few twigs left by the crew. It outputs slope, horizontal, and vertical distances. The compass directions never would settle down so I used the staff compass. We did a mile of ridge in a couple of days. 54 "control" points. All control checks were within a few feet which is sufficiently accurate for what I need.

A day where all the high tech gear stays in the truck and I spend the day strolling through the woods occasionally yelling "left left hair right GOOD GOOD!" is a good day.

paden cash, post: 388155, member: 20 wrote: Not too long ago I actually ran into an old geezer (?!) that saw us digging around with a pin finder and came out to "help". We were working in an older ('60s) rural plat with 5 and 10 acre lots. I was familiar with the original surveyor's work and his habit of NOT setting permanent pins is well known.

This old fellow showed us where his pin was located. I mentioned his memory was good. He replied he "ought to remember where its at" as he had set it himself 40 years ago. He told a story of him and the builder setting up an instrument (?) and measuring from the section line road with a steel tape. The distance would have been over 1000'. Cute.

After we found everything we could I looked at it on the screen and that pin was not that bad. I think it was probably less than 2' from record...and given the prevalent discord and disarray in the area...I called it a good point. No need to get picky after 40 years, right?

I found some blazed trees on a ridge meander. I like to look through the old files left behind by my predecessors. So doing that one day I found a blue line copy of a map and Xerox copy of a report by our adjoining timber company. They set 1/2" rebars at most of the angle points in 1976. Next trip out there I found a bunch of the rebars, some recently flagged and painted blue, others not found in decades. I emailed the manager of the successor lumber company letting him know I had the map and had found most of the rebars. He replied the he did the survey and map. That is when I noticed his initials on the map. He is a really nice guy being cooperative with giving me gate combos and historical information about old logging practices, etc. He is a Forester, not a licensed Surveyor. A lot of Surveyors resist accepting the work of Foresters but he was doing work incidental to his professional responsibilities and it is substantially correct given the ridge is the boundary. His precision is a few feet versus a few hundredths we expect but the original meanders would have been run very fast in 1906 with compass and chain. So it's okay with me. This is not downtown Manhattan.