Hunting Claim Jumpers

[French Spaniel]

One thing I hate is folks who hunt land without permission. My group works very hard to get land to hunt in South Dakota. The land owners all work during the day and don't watch to see if the right people are hunting their land.

We had a group from Arkansas hunting on our land without permission. When I approached them I asked them the question of which I knew the answer. "Do you have permission to hunt on this land?" The leader of the group said. "Well, we hunted it several years ago" I asked " Do you have permission to hunt it this year?" He said," Well, nobody said we could ... but nobody said we couldn't."

Then I saw some of their guys going across the road to hunt. I told him they couldn't hunt that piece either because the man who owned that land was saving it for his son who had travelled up from Arizona to hunt. The man from Arkansas just looked at me and said in his southern drawl, "Oh heck, they got lots of birds ... don't mind if we take a few." I was shocked that they were so oblivious to what they were doing.

I think they had a lot of money. They said they flew private jets up and paid someone to drive their dogs and equipment up. Maybe they figured they would just pay off the land owner if they got caught.

Then the next day a bunch of guys from Wisconsin were on the land. They acted dumb and said " Well isn't this So & So's land." They knew.

[Kodiak]

haha...i cannot believe they are so ignorant.

[French Spaniel]

The thing was they had already gotten only two birds short of their groups limit on the land we were going to hunt. They were going across the road to finish out.

The land owner is a real nice guy and I didn't go make a fuss with him because I didn't want him getting a bad taste for hunters. I've seen some guys go from letting folks hunt to not letting anyone hunt when there are hunters hunting without permission.

Lucky for us we've kept our contacts over the last twenty years and found other places to hunt. Unlucky for us ... none of them are as good as this piece of land.

[Mike Walerak]

Good Land in SD is pretty hard to find if you don't pay for it. It is very important to give the land ownerstoatl respect.

I have access to some very small portions of decent private land and fortunalty ahve a great relationship with the landowners. I know first hand that is only takes one bad experiance for a landowner to quit letting hunters onto their property.

Please treat them with the respect. I try and do trades such as a pheasant hunt for a fishing trip. Seems to work rather well.

mw

[French Spaniel]

I agree... I do similar things. I always go to the dollar store and buy some cheap baskets. Then I fill them up with goodies like candy, nuts, jams, jerky and bring them to every land owner I have permission. My wife bought about 50 pounds of Salmon from some guy so this year the baskets will include Salmon.

If it is a big piece of land I'll paint their barn or their house as long as they let me hunt. They jump at the chance to have their buildings painted for free.