what would you do? (True story of a friend)

The entire property that we hunt is 14 acres. "Crowding the line" as it's called is pretty well unavoidable with 3 or 4 hunters when the lines are only 150 yards apart. Our neighbor has probably 200 acres available to him and he routinely hunts within 50 yards of our line. Too bad for us. Too bad for him to when we hunt near the line. Oddly, when we see each other we wave and exchange pleasantries without a hint of animosity.

If my neighbor came on my property and cut a tree for ANY reason I'd call the police and/or sue him.:mad: That's trespassing and destruction of property. I think that in NY the secondary crime makes the trespassing a more severe charge.
 
i've hunted with bow and arrow years ago. working heavily at the time of year the season starts forced me to stop. family time became more important as well. i do miss bowhunting, i still have my bow, etc. would not sell or trade any of it for the world. last time i hunted with it my 9 yr. old was still in diapers.
 
I would say that your friend is in the wrong here man.

He should have left well enough alone, went home called up his neighbour and just asked about it instead of jumping the gun like that. The neighbour has probably been out scouting and working on a big animal and he has gotten to know its habits and was preparing a surprise for it right after it crossed onto his property.

Where I come from all the neighbours get along just fine... no one even has to ask to go onto another farmers land. You can hunt wherever you like and no one gets offended.

Its just a matter of being neighbourly and friendly... if you do things like go onto a guys land and cut down his tree with his treestand that he bulit with his spare time and effort you make enemies. Pi$$ing off all of your neighbours turns you into an isolated flinty eyed militiaman. Pretty soon you are walking around with a tinfoil hat on talking to yourself and acting like Dale Gribble because you made everyone mad and they dont talk to you anymore.
 
hunter set up on me once.

I was hunting in a stand on the border of a field that had been hunted by our party for over 15 years. I climb up look behind me and see a bow hunter 30 years behind me. (this is the same guy we had to take down his stands and leave notes on them when they were 300 yards up on our property. I got the tax maps and showed him the old fence lines and survey stakes, after a while he agreed we knew the boundaries. ) that's another story.

continuing on... I walked over to him and whispered hey, whats up as to not ruin our hunt. He came down and I said, "I know this is your property but we've been hunting out of that stand on ours for years and your 30 yards away. Did you have to set up right on top of me?" He got a little grumpy and said ok I'll move it and started to put his bow away. I said, Whoa whoa... it's about 4:00.. magic hour so keep it there and lets hunt here and now the deer will be comming anytime... if you move it down there.. that would be appreciated but don't do it now and ruin both our hunts." We bothed hunted next to each other, a week later he moved it to where I suggested, which I knew to be a better spot.

We have since spoken again several times and no problems. He has a narrow 2-3 acre swath of land below where we hunt between us and the lake and cottages, its too small to hunt really but there are a lot of deer that go through that area. He later moved it again down 400 yards or so close to one of our other stands but we don't hunt it when he's there as we could be shooting at the same deer. We wouldn't like him to hunt there at all as it makes us move but it's his land and he has no other place to go on his land.. All in all we worked it out. We aren't friends but we have been cordial and it's working. Moral to the story... stay calm, talk it out, there are lots of deer none are worth the trouble to get mad about.
 
Summer man you got more patience than I would have. Its called tresspassing and after the first couple of times, I would start to get his attention formally.
 
when i was growing up we had hunting neighbors on 3 sides of our land, within 2 weeksof moving in we had permission to hunt their land if they could hunt ours. so we went from a 5 acre area to a 26 acre area.

i dont know why people are so uptite over people hunting near their land.
 
if the guy had the tree stand on his own property then your buddy is ignorant. simple and plain. the guy was fully within his rights to hunt his own property. now if the tree was on your buddies property then it would be kind of funny.
 
So my buddy cut the tree down that day

your buddy may be one of the many nuts roaming around untethered.:eek:.......but you can bring him and his new dominant freind a fried balony sandwich on visitor day.:p
 
this happened to my uncle once. he lives in one of the most rednck areas of indiana so he decide to get the guy back. he erected a treestand about 30 yrds away from the the other guys stand on his own side of the property line. on opening morning he came to his stand about 15 min after the sun came up wearing plenty of orange and making as much noise as possible. he then proceeded to cough as loudly as possible for the next 2 hours. he came back that evening and the other hunter and his stand were gone. problem solved
 
You Yankees are truly something. Down here we work things out fairly (at least in my neck of the woods).

My shot, my animal, my responsibility wherever it falls and whatever kind of animal it is. If I shoot a skunk and it runs under a fence, THAT's my responsiblilty.

There may be more at work here than stated. And then there's this;

When I bought my property in NC I had it surveyed as opposed to acceptnig the time old tradition of 'from this tree to the creek to......' and ended up with an extra o.52 acres. The neighbor on one side was furious as his hog pen had crossed over onto my property line over decades. It was on the other side of of a wooded area and I told him that it didn't matter to me but he fumed for 2 yrs. until the drought. I had a deep well and told everybody around that as long as I had water, everybody had water. After that we were hunting buddies, he'd bring over a ham after the pig killings, he offered to bushhog some land that I had that was cleared earlier (it's all on it's way to recovery now).

It's all on how you deal with the situation. Provoking will get you nowhere. Heck, you both like to hunt. What's a better basis than that to be friends? Maybe you both like to fish too.
 
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