I have put up with poachers/trespassers, wood thieves, and people who dump their trash on my properties.
When I was a teen, I'd ask the trespassers to leave. Most did without trouble. Hunters would ignore, tear down or blow my no trespassing private property signs off of the trees they were posted on. Way back then it was required that your property be posted to keep hunters out. Now the hunter must have signed permission from the land owner in their possession. The permission is good for one day. While this sounds like a solution to hunters trespassing, it has literally done nothing.
The best solution for hunters trespassing is to call a tow company and have their vehicle towed from my property. This costs them a minimum of $300, plus any storage fee. Word gets around fast, and suddenly people that have "hunted this land their whole life" find elsewhere to hunt. Ditto for hunters that tell me that they own the land or are caretakers of the land.
One guy, a retired state cop posted hundreds of acres, like 400 or 500 acres, with his name, and told people that he was the designated caretaker of the property. Did this for the past 25 or more years. He wasn't, and now spotlighting deer at night has stopped completely.
One particularly crafty hunter drove to the middle of my one plot of land and cut saplings to cover his truck. MY saplings. I thoughtfully removed all of the lug nuts on his truck wheels. He started the truck at the end of the day of hunting and made it all of 10 feet before the first rim fell off. The other three soon followed. That cost him $1200 to get lifted up, new lug nuts installed and to be towed out.
A few years ago I wake up to find 4 pickup trucks in my back yard. Being deer season, I call the tow company. The truck shows up, tows two trucks and is hooking up the third when the "hunters" come out of the woods. Upset by their vehicles being towed, they call the game warden and the police. The police show up first, I explain what I did and what they did. One guy gets very upset and says he has written permission from the land owner to hunt there, and I am not the land owner.
The cop asks to see the permission. The hunter reaches in his pocket, pulls out a handkerchief, which he drops. When the hunter picks up the handkerchief, a baggie with about a half ounce of pot falls out. The hunter is arrested. While the cop is writing up the paperwork, the game warden arrives. He is given the "we have permission from the land owner to hunt here" line. He asks to see the permission, which no one has. He asks the name of the land owner, and is given a name I've never heard. I show the cop and game warden my property tax bill and my drivers license, proving my ownership.
The game warden asks if everyone's shotgun is empty. The answer is a resounding 'no'. He tells everyone to empty their weapons, and they do so. 5 or 6 shells are shucked on the ground in front of each hunter. Automatic fine, limit is 3 rounds for deer season. Everyone gets a fine for over capacity and a fine for hunting on private property without permission. They may have lost their hunting license for a year or more for hunting private property without permission.
When people dump trash, I rifle thru the trash until I find a utility bill or something with a name and address on it. I call the person and tell them that I want them to remove the trash from my property. No one ever knows how the trash got there, because THEY didn't put it there.
A call to the EPA solves the problem. The EPA cleans up the mess and sends the owner of the trash the bill. I believe the average cost of cleanup is around $200 to $300. One unfortunate soul was hit with a bill in the thousands. I had him on a game camera dumping the trash, draining his oil from his truck on the ground and then giving the camera the finger. Evidently it is fun to do an oil change on your vehicle in the middle of the woods with no drain pan. The EPA went insane when they saw the tape.
Wood thieves are a breed of their own. "You're not using the wood, it's standing dead wood anyway." I guess standing dead trees a few hundred yards off of the nearest road is instantly visible to anyone with a chainsaw. I used to throw them off the property and have them dump the wood already in their truck next to my house, but I found calling the state police and reporting a theft in progress gets better results.
Now, after 50 years my trouble with poachers, trespassers, wood thieves and trash dumpers is near zero. But I'm known as the grouchy bastard. Go figure.
