doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Ah nature, warning shots!

OPEN GATES, OPEN GATES - Maloney!
If I let my gate open ol'sod, I need a turnstile as every freeloader, poacher, joyrider in the county would have a day of sport...at my expense.
You need to know, dear ol'Jack, that the world is not a hippie commune!

the word "selfish" gets bandied about a lot. usually by someone who thinks he has some right to use something of someone elses. i've got a real strong territorial drive and i figure what's mine (or my family's) i've worked hard for and nobody else has any bloody right to use it except by my grace. what's mine is mine (conversely what's lowell's is lowell's) and there's nothing selfish about that.

The biggest problem you will find with "public access" is the "public" part .

Owning the The Big Wallow is a hassle. No wonder Barbara Stanwyck had wrinkles! On the other hand, Pa Cartwright was always handing over the keys to every stray cat, psychotic and bad seed that came down the pike. Wonder the place never burnt down. Maybe it did?

I think those invites to hunt on "his" friend's property don't come twice if it ain't kept strictly "just between us". And sometimes they don't come because the "club" is so exclusive that it's composed of he and thee but not me. And that's OK too.

jack

"This land is your land, this land is my land," is the anthem of the New World Order. Beware of the man who just hums it, for he may not know our language!

I would never dream of going on someone else's land uninvited.

That said...is it just me or have times changed? 25 years ago there was just 'land'....in other words, some land was 'owned' by someone and other land was just there. So no one cared if you went on it and shot a few rounds. Today, it seems like every single postage stamp of land is owned by someone, and they actively want to keep you off of it. Particularly government owned land seems this way.

I think the 4 wheelers are actually far more to blame than gun owners. Nothing creates havoc on piece of land like a few hundred horsepower connected to knobby tires.

Garbage dumps are another example...used to be you could go in and shoot rats or old washing machines but no more.

An old friend of mine, Gray (his real name)a retired dentist, owns a beautiful 30 acre lake next to his home near here. He told me that someone that he knew only casually called him one Saturday evening and said: "Hey Gray, if you see someone down by your lake in the morning fishing, that'll be me!" To which Gray promptly replied: "Hey & if you see someone up by my house shooting down toward the lake, that'll be me!" (He didn't say what he would be shooting but he does have a Civil War 6 pounder mounted up by his house that he & his kids load up with black powder & toliet paper & shoot off every 4th. of July)

you got that right. we have a huge number of people here now who think everything is theirs and have no respect whatsoever for the entire concept of "personal property".

GregSY, if a comet came zinging it's way in from outer space, and hit the state of Missouri, it would hit on private land!
There is no such thing as a vacant lot - someone somewhere owns it.

I have had people hunting on my land from almost the first acre I bought. Friends and people who know me just went and hunted. No real need for permission or anything like that. Back 30 years ago it was OK and most who knew me took care of the land. No trash, gates closed and no big deal to me. Now days it has gotten so bad that almost everything is posted. Not by me in all cases but by those who tend the farms or in one case by the person who lives across the road from a large timber tract.

It got so bad that I had to pay several thousand dollars to have trash dumps and a tire dump removed. People just started dumping stuff on the woods and it got out of hand. Old washing machines, TV's, bed frames, you name it. One jerk dumped his trash and in his trash was his mail. He tried to tell the judge someone stole his trash and dumped it on my land. Judge told him that was more BS than a cowboy movie and ordered him to pay for the entire trash removal. You bet I voted for that judge next time.

So Lowell has my sympathy in this case. His land should be his to lord over and anyone who crosses it should be under his lordship.

GregSY

One major thing to consider is that if someone got hurt on your land 30 years ago the went to the doctor or hospital and dealt with their injury. Today they do the same thing but swing by the lawyer first to make sure that you end up paying for their accident.

If you think that I am kidding I can tell you one case that recently happened where a person was on posted land and still sued for his injury. Cost thousands of dollars for the land owner to win. He is out what I expect is near 75K or more and he posted his land. Had he not had it posted he almost certainly would have lost. Judges and juries are no place for an honest man to place his life's work at risk. So when people post their land it is as much to protect themselves as to keep others away.