Surveying in an area a couple of days ago where the adjoining tract is loaded with scrubby trees.?ÿ Most of the area we attempted to traverse on a 4-wheeler was mainly prairie grass interrupted with boulders about the size of your desk that could magically appear from nowhere, sort of like a whack-a-mole sticking its head up through the hole.?ÿ One second you swear it isn't there and the next it's directly in front of you.?ÿ When we finally returned (safely) to where the vehicles were setting I announced to my helper as follows:?ÿ If the client shows up and asks how things are going I intend him to tell him things were great until we met up with a rattlesnake six inches in diameter and ten feet long.?ÿ But, then, an alligator suddenly appeared out of the slough and snapped his jaws around the rattler, protecting us from the rattler.?ÿ When all of a sudden a black bear came charging over from the adjoiner tract, leaped the six-wire, barbed-wire fence and proceeded to attack the gator.?ÿ Just another normal day.
"So, you found some magic mushrooms"
Sounds like you've been hangin' with Hunter Thompson or Carlos Castaneda.?ÿ ?????ÿ
Last week our drone was hovering near the shore of a nearly 80 acre pond.?ÿ Suddenly an 8' long large-mouth bass shot straight up out of the water and gulped the drone, probably thinking it was a blue tail fly.?ÿ The operator screamed and one quick thinking crew member impaled the bass with a range pole as it entered back into the water.?ÿ Thrashing in the bloody water we all jumped in and grabbed the dying behemoth by the tail and dragged it to shore.
We drew straws to see who had to crawl up inside the bass to retrieve the drone.
I saw a Sasquatch foot print once and maybe even some hair!
For real...
I broke down a section once. Took me three days. 3 of the corners were in major intersections. I thought I might be killed many times by the vehicles flying by as I exposed the monument and examined the info stamped on the caps. The southerly part of the section was an infested swamp, snakes, leeches, other assorted muck and insects. The East and West 1/4 corners were on property of a man I thought would shoot me if he caught me back on his property after chasing me off 3 times. But I endured, I survived.
The really bad thing though was all of the other surveyors had marked the wrong range on the caps. They all said R69W and I know I was supposed to survey section 22 township 3 north and range 68 west. To this day I don't know how all those other guys got it wrong.
Mr lurker, maybe it was range 68.5 west, and you rounded up, and they rounded down..... 😉
They lost the punch for the number 8 out of the set. Probably figured the 9 looked more like an 8 than the 7.
Met a couple of natives this week.
The first dropped a 48" tree on top of our monument (concrete post set in the 1960s). Actually it is 4 logs about 20 feet long piled on his property (at least it was his tree), his neighbor's property and our State Forest plus a couple of smaller trees and a huge mess left in our Forest. So we get Fred the Forester out there with a chain saw to cut a wedge out of the tree so we can get to our monument which marks our boundary corner. Guy comes out shirtless (looks like Sasquatch) all upset about us cutting "his" wood that he apparently has no problem storing on his neighbor's property. Fred is diplomatic and de-escalates the situation and explains timber harvest plans. He says call me next time you come out here. I'm thinking did you call us when you dropped a huge log on our Forest and left this huge mess in our Forest? I doubt it. But that's people, all one way, treat me with courtesy but I can do what ever I want with no sense of irony. I'm not bitter about it though.
the second guy, obviously very lonely from sheltering in place, made up the for the first. Are you guys Surveyors? (No one knows we are Surveyors, maybe we are Park Rangers, they aren't sure but no one thinks surveyor until we tell them). Yes we are. Okay shows us a monument we hadn't seen then another that we had found then we know the center quarter is down an extremely deep slope into a creek, he says let me show you the trail down there but first let me show you my Model A collection, wow, some beautiful cars (house looks pretty rough, guy is pretty humble looking, I'm guessing early 80s). He has a 1950s Peugeot Weekender (like a small funny looking van). The Peugeot isn't drivable right now, no glass, engine just sitting there cockeyed but he says he used to drive it. He has a bunch of old to new welders AND a small band saw mill. He showed us "the easy way" to get to this monument and offered the use of his outhouse (no thanks). Nice guy but had a hard time getting away. He showed two of us the hard way back up and they got treated to a 60s redwood tree fairy ring ritual. I walked back up the "easy" way because we had left tools at the monument as we went past to look at a huge slide our boundary runs across. That guy never stopped talking, pretty interesting most of it. His late best friend was a Land Surveyor which I believe I've heard the name before, wish I could remember it.
Its been mighty hot around here for surveying.?ÿ Pastures are drying up a little and the mule broke out and got into the cornfield, eating all she wanted.?ÿ As the sun kept heating up, the corn finally started popping right there in the field, kernels flying everywhere.?ÿ The mule saw all that white fluffy stuff flying around thinking it was snow.?ÿ She had long since shed her winter coat and stood there amongst the flying kernels and froze to death.
Indigenous personnel are always a wild card. Like you pointed out, some are obtuse and aggressive, some have been waiting just to have someone to talk to. Both have their drawbacks.
I process easement docs for about a dozen new commercial marijuana grows a month. The "wild card" factor on these folks is an understatement. A few are just plain business-minded people that have a firm grasp on the process. The majority of them are paranoid, secretive and heavily armed. That conversation usually starts like this, "Nice M4, is it a Colt?"
I never miss a chance to ask, "You all do know that growing this stuff is legal now, don't you?"
And then there's the bleary-eyed amateur horticulturist that wants to spend 30 minutes showing off his Rube Goldberg automatic watering system put together from scraps from the city dump...yawn..
I don't know which is worse. One just takes longer than the other.
I don't know which is worse.?ÿ One just takes longer than the other.?ÿ
Sounds like he growing in containers, that takes much longer than hydroponic. ?????ÿ
I had a pet gold fish. I started taking a little bit of water out of his bowl every day until he could live without water.
I took him out for a walk one day and as we were crossing over a ridge his leash slipped off and he fell in the river and drowned.
Last week our drone was hovering near the shore of a nearly 80 acre pond.?ÿ Suddenly an 8' long large-mouth bass shot straight up out of the water and gulped the drone, probably thinking it was a blue tail fly.?ÿ The operator screamed and one quick thinking crew member impaled the bass with a range pole as it entered back into the water.?ÿ Thrashing in the bloody water we all jumped in and grabbed the dying behemoth by the tail and dragged it to shore.
We drew straws to see who had to crawl up inside the bass to retrieve the drone.
That sounds pretty far fetched--I can't picture you with a drone
Licensed Land Surveyor
Finger Lakes Region, Upstate New York
i am Sasquatch?ÿ
Not with the shoe size I think I recall you telling us.?ÿ He would be about EEEE width.
An elephant walked through our garden yesterday (according to Grandson, I did not witness it) so we filled the footprints with concrete and put the boy??s footprints in them as a warning to the elephant to not do it again. It seems to be working because I haven??t seen any elephants.
?ÿ