WOW, this is probably the single worst thread I have ever read on this forum - if I thought the main gist on here was the general opinion of all, I'm not even sure I would remain a member of this site!!! There is so much WRONG here I don't even know where to start...
1.) Obviously, very few of you are or have been actual landowners who have been forced to deal with this problem on your own land - and especially not in a crowded place like the northeastern U.S. where things are often ratcheted up to infinity & beyond...
2.) Any "TERRORIZATION" going on here sounds a hell of a lot worse from the perpetrator than the law!!!
3.) By this line of reasoning, should we also turn a deaf ear & blind eyes on the drunk driver who may possibly kill an innocent family, a neighborhood drug dealer openly doling out to all the local Jr High & High School kids, a woman being raped or beat up by her boyfriend??? How about the meth lab I ran across way deep in the TX backwoods while deer hunting???
4.) Onpoint - How big is this town where the @-hole gets away with this kind of behavior??? In the small-town America that I grew up in (which is what most pheasant/hunting towns are like), there are plenty friends & neighbors for ample backup to help make sure a bully like this SOB minds his manners once & for all - we don't always keep waiting on the cops to handle our business when they refuse to help out!
I haven't always been a preacher - not very proud of my past, but I have lived on BOTH sides of the law in everything being discussed here & I have paid fairly appropriately to the law for some of my own sins! Looking back, I would hate to think others would help enable me by turning a blind eye...
I am a fairly decent guy and will go out of my way to be nice - but one way to bring out the worst in me is to keep on running over me like a bulldozer!!! I don't go looking for trouble (& will definitely call the cops or CO first) - but I ain't gonna run forever when it has finally found or cornered me!!!
Each to his own, but two things from my perspective:
1.) At 50+ years old with all the crap I've been thru in life, I have already figured out that we're all gonna die sooner or later anyway - I aim to live freely while I'm here & ain't no low-life gonna hold me hostage from doing so.
2.) I believe in livin'-right AND forgiveness - and unfortunately, there have been a couple situations in my lifetime where right-or-wrong, guess I'll just have to pray for forgiveness and hope for the best - may the best man win!!!
Onpoint, I could tell you a personal story far worse than yours (nothing at all to do with hunting) - the guy was even an ex-cop w/law enforcement cronies & MY OWN LAWYER behind my back to back him up - no one would possibly believe the depths of the story unless they had lived thru it!!!
Also, on my own land in PA in the past I have had the most incredible run-ins with foul hunters that you can possibly imagine. It was worth the alternative to me & I wouldn't change one thing if I had it all to do over again! I know what it is to scream & yell at the top of my lungs at a guy getting in my treestand 100 yds right behind my house, "Get out now while you still can & don't even try shooting a deer, cuz I can guarantee you will never make it off the property with one!!!"...Also, once held a particularly NOTORIOUS, repetitive bad apple (known far & wide throughout the hunting community) at gunpoint with a friend/witness until the game warden got there...It was a very unpleasant experience for the both of us, but word got around quickly thru the hunting bad-boy grapevine & I can promise you he & the rest of them finally figured out that this SOB wasn't worth it & moved on down the road to easier pickings!!!
If you think I'm bad, should've seen the mean-as-a snake OLD farmer that had been there 36 yrs be4 he sold the place to me - he had a reputation throughout the entire county as someone you did not want to mess with - even took a neighbor kids motorbike away from him who was royally tearing up the property on purpose & whooped his dad's @ss when he came to get it...Horrific/shameful for a preacher to have to go gaining/maintaining a rep like that when it came to not being a pushover on my own property & then try to be the nice guy around town to everybody else, but the alternative on my own property was atrocious!!!
I'm not tryin to be some kind of bad-@ss here - I just don't think we law-abiders are the problem child. Like I said, I just don't cotton real well to being railroaded or bulldozed by anybody!!!!!!!
Grant it, the folks riding around shooting out of the truck aforementioned here might have even been the farmer or his kids on their own property, whatever, I don't know - but some kind of line has to be drawn somewhere - doesn't hurt to check, better safe than sorry!...If the mindset being proposed by some on this thread ever takes root, or news of it spreads far & wide - guess we can all start hunting wherever we want without asking & do whatever we like without fear of any repercussion!!! Just my cheap 2 cents... :cheers: