BOXED IN!

[Gissert]

My dad, brother and I used to hunt a piece of property that was bordered by a road on one side, and couple thousand acres of public land on the other three.

It was a pretty good deal, if you stayed in your stand. Sooner or later someone would move deer into you. Two of the biggest bucks we have shot were moved right into us.

On the con side, we always had a few folks every year that would not see the no trespassing signs. You'd think having to cross over a fence would give them a clue.

I wished we still hunted there. The landowner wanted to sell us the land, but we did not have the funds to do so. Now this piece is all public land.

[Little Joe]

I've been deer hunting 40 acres of private land for the last 15 years. Most of the surrounding land was tax forfiture or privately owned but not hunted. Over the last couple of years that land has been purchased to the point now where we've got a sea of orange on all four sides now.

I am wondering if this has happened to other land owners/hunters and what the effect has been on your hunt?

We saw a lot of deer this year and I personally benefited from some neighbors pushing a buck to me (they shot 5 times and missed, I didn't). Previous two years we didn't see much and blamed it on the neighbors getting them first before they entered our land.

Pro's and con's to everything I guess, just curious about others experiences.

On the "con" side, one of the new neighbors took it upon himself to sit in one of our stands and gut shot a doe which he spent about 30 minutes tracking before giving up! Finally caught up with him to tell him he was trespassing and he pretended to not know it was private property - EVEN AFTER WALKING RIGHT UNDER ONE OF OUR POSTED SIGNS!