I’m working on an article for the December installment of “In the Woods With Tim Kjellesvik” over at Big Buck Archery. Its focus is on poaching and the impact that activity has on hunters, landowners and game.
Today I was suiting up to hunt a new parcel and was chatting with my buddy Karl about the new stand I acquired yesterday. Someone had left their climber at the base of a tree on another property I hunt. I checked with the landowner who confirmed no one else should be there. They encouraged me to remove the stand (not that it took any encouragement) so I picked it up yesterday on my way out of town.
He laughed when I showed him the stand in the back of my Jeep. “You oughta go into business selling the gear you keep confiscating.”
It’s funny but up until that point I hadn’t really done an inventory of all the equipment I’ve found from people sneaking around my hunting areas. Some of it was junk but a few things have been really useful.
The silver lining of having people poaching on my properties are the goodies I can incorporate into my own kit, or pass along to buddies who need it more than I do. My friend Michael has been trying to put some money together for a climber for some time now. He was the recipient of that first stand I found back in October. This last one is bound for another buddy too. Maybe it’s a kind of penance these trespassers are inadvertently paying.
I doubt there’s anything I can do to completely eliminate the threat of poachers, but redistributing their gear may cause some to think twice about coming back. I think I’ll start calling it a Trespassing Tax.
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