doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Thanks to trail cameras.

You don't know poaching problems until you live in close proximity to Amish Dutchmen.

These are people who don't use refrigerators. So they take fresh meat of any kind, anytime they can without regard for Seasons, Bag Limits, or Posted signs. When you see a dozen or so marching across Posted Land, calling the Game Wardens does absolutely no good. I've chased some down after seeing them cross a fence within 2 feet of a bright colored Posted sign, and they swear they never saw it. I never thought I would post my land until the year I hunted in the woods right behind my house on the first day of deer season. I saw only a couple deer, but a constant stream of Amish Dutchies... none of whom had asked permission to hunt my land. One had set up a ladder stand that I had thought belonged to a white neighbor (they call us white men or Englishmen) who archery hunted back there. I caught a Dutchman climbing the ladder just before sunrise, and asked him if that was his tree stand. He told me the landowner had given him permission to set it up. When I not so politely informed him I was the f***ing landowner, he stammered, "Oh, I guess we'll let you hunt here then."

I decided then and there to put up Posted signs... which turned out to be a monumental waste of time.

Trail cameras wouldn't help either. The Amish trespassers all look alike and dress exactly the same. Give the cops a description in this area of some guys with lever action .30-30's, beards, wire rimmed glasses, straw hats, homemade denim pants, blue cotton shirts, black boots, and an orange vest, and that will describe the entire community. They inbreed and marry their cousins, so they all have the same DNA. Their buggies all look pretty much the same too, and they don't have license plates. Ask most landowners near here why they posted their land, and almost all say it was an attempt to keep the Dutchies out. If only you could get 12 of these landowners on the Jury if you got caught shooting an Amish trespasser, you would almost certainly be acquitted.

Only if you're an evil, crooked, greedy bastard would you succumb to that sort of motivation. Honest, honorable landowners will not harbor that sort of temptation for a minute.

I may have told this story here a few months ago but it is worth repeating and is told from the view of spite baiters. At one time in the lowcountry of South Carolina, the State allowed private landowners arrest powers by having empolyees "deputized" as game wardens. One plantation nearby took extremes to see that locals couldn't hunt the tidal creeks around their rice fields. The Rabbit Sheriffs would patrol the river and creeks harassing the local hunters. The eve before the opening of the season, several locals (Harry, the last of the group, died recently), including a member of the Army National Guard who was a full time helicopter pilot for the unit, flew a Huey at night over a pond and spread corn just before the season. The Feds were anonymously alerted by the spite baiters. Multiple arrests were made the following opening for shooting ducks over bait and the landowner eventually figured out what was going on. He called off the dogs and an informal truce was obtained with the local hunters. Not long afterwards, the SCDNR stopped the practice of allowing private wardens. Gil

KY Jon, seems to me you might have a civil case against the perpetrator, even if the game warden doesn't charge him with a criminal offense. Your damages would be the value of the time and money you spent preparing the field for legal hunting, in the critical first part of the season, which was taken from you by this guy's trespassing and illegal action, which you have documented well with the trail cameras. You might also be able to compel the game warden to reveal publicly the result of his investigation, especially since the guy confessed to doing it while drunk. Suing him would probably cost you more than you would get in damages, but would be just retribution.

There's an end-around play that is possible here in the future. Just plant corn in the field in strips, early. It will be matured and dried down before the dove opener and you can mow it, or part of it, down. You will have just taken away the ne-er do well's opportunity to bait it with corn, because corn is already there. Totally legal. Not much way for a crook to mess it up with bait, unless he uses rock salt.

I shot a sunflower field Saturday afternoon that was planted like this, alternating strips of corn and sunflower. Brown top could be also planted in strips along with the other.

A landowner near where the spite baiting incident I wrote about upthread in more recent times sweetened a flooded standing short stalk corn field by bringing in corn plants uprooted from another field. USF&W genetically tested the suspicious plants and determined that they were unrelated to the legal corn crop in the flooded field. The busted duck hunters paid hefty fines and the flooded field was shut down for weeks.
As an aside, while one can legally run a silage chopper through rows of corn for dove shoots, not so with crop manipulation for ducks.

As for "poachers from hell", Google "Hmong trespasser murders" Gil

He just died in prison.