One of the problems you have is that even if you catch someone on the property, you can't press charges. The landowner has to do it. In many cases landowners, especially ones who lease their property, aren't inclined to go through the headache of seeing the charges through, and therefore nothing ever happens. It's a shame, but it's the truth. IMO you need to verify with the landowner that it's okay to post No Trespassing signs along the areas where you're most frequently having trouble. Hopefully this will cause the guys who are trespassing without knowing to stop and rethink things before crossing that fence. You also need to have a talk with the landowner and let him know what's going on to get his take on the situation. If he finds out the outfitter next door is being a d-bag about things, he may not allow him to come in and lease it out from under you. Luckily there are still a few people out there who aren't driven by the almighty dollar, and believe that doing the right thing is good enough. Hopefully he's one of them. Finally, I would contact the DNR and see what they have to say. In Illinois outfitters have to be licensed to do business. Not sure what all is involved in them getting their license revoked, but if they are knowingly telling their clients to hunt on land they don't have permission to be on, I would assume the DNR would like to know. Care to name the outfitter by chance?
Thanks Justin. My landowner would not press charges. He's too nice, and wants to be "friendly neighbors". I don't think he would lease it from under me, but he told me he would sell it if the price was right. Which is something I'd like to try to work towards myself (or atleast a portion of it) The outfitter is Midwest Bucks ran by Rick Davidson. From what I understand, the business is in his wife's name (Lynn), because he's already had his license revoked.
Go to https://www.bbb.org/consumer-complaints/file-a-complaint/get-started And file a complaint. My wife has done this numerous times and man does it work fast. They will contact the owner to investigate the claim, and once you’re on that black list good luck with getting clients in the future. It will stick with the owners name everywhere he/she goes. It would help if you keep logs of each event. You should provide as much detail as possibly. Including dates and times. I feel your pain though. Many moons ago while hunting our (owner) ground we had a guy buy the neighboring property. The first year we caught him in my stand on the property line. He had timber and the stand was facing our cornfield. He got a little heated at first but he did get down and told me I needed to remove that stand because it was too close to his land. “Happy thoughts” the next year comes and once again there is this guy in my stand on opening day. After the same discussion he got down. This time I stated that he had 65 acres and I have 40. Why can’t you just hunt on your land? He stated that he didn’t want anyone hunting out of that stand because they would shoot his deer. WTF? His Deer? Anyways, after several heating comments he left and I stayed. I was only 17 or 18 yrs old. The next season he had gone in and cut ton’s of large trees down over the trails feeding into our fields. Plus he cut down the tree with my stand in it, and placed his own stand about 10 feet into his woods from there. We decided that we would not hunt our property that year and instead my dad barrowed 2 used Johnny on the spots (outhouse) and placed them on the property lines where the deer leave the fields and head into his woods. In return he called the GW on ous several times making claims about us poaching and trespassing. He even tried to put salt blocks in our woods near our stands and he was going to call the GW when we hunted out of them, but luckily we discovered them 1st and reported them to the GM. Try not to get into a battle with this guy. You don’t want it to get as nasty as ours did. We ended up selling our property, because the deer had enough of our antics and we didn’t see another deer there for 3 years in a row.
You would think other hunters would have the same respect you put towards anything to do with hunting. But in most cases were wrong. It's sad that people can't leave other peoples stuff alone and have to tresspass, it gives the rest of us a bad wrap who are doing everything by the book and how we were raised better than that. Keep your chin up and keep striving forward!
Oh my god selbros your story just got me so fired up, how did you keep yourself calm, I'm sorry I would of snapped. Anyone that goes out of there way to ruin another persons hunt should lose their privilege to hunt themselves. You hear more stories like this all the time and I am getting sick of it. It's my deer are you kidding me and him trying to set you up like that.....I'm at a loss of words!!!!
That really stinks man!!! I understand your logic on staying on his good side though. Its tough because you really want to tell him to shove it, and call the game warden. Good luck with it and stay positive!
