Posting on public lands

Woodsman · Post by **Woodsman** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 7:53 am

I was wondering if some of you have encountered this in your neck of the woods? A week, sometimes two weeks in advance, we see fellow hunters reserving spots on public lands with signs posted on public property. These signs usually say something to the effect of " Deer Hunters hunting 2005, 4 persons". In our province this isn't legal in the sense that our public land belongs to everyone. First come on the spot on that given day has as much right as the "reserved posters".

Our laws even go further. Any given nailed on fixed stands are illegal and will be dimantled by the game wardens if found.

We hunt farely deep in where most don't dare go, so we see little of this where we hunt, but there was a year when the whole bottom of the mountain was posted full with new stands everywhere. We tore down these signs and some in our group even sat close to these stands built by others. Needless to say it led to some confrontation, but we expalined that these lands were public and no one had unique rights to it. First come first serve.

How would you handle this? We're all going out to spend a nice day afield, but if you do nothing, even the public land you have chosen to hunt on becomes inaccessable.

maple · Post by **maple** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:18 am

Woodsman,

Same thing in Ontario. No posting on public land. Here, if you post land that you do not have the right to post, you can be fined. Check this out with the Agents de Faune.

Maple

Woodsman · Post by **Woodsman** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 6:11 pm

Fined for posting? I'll look into it over here and see what they say.

huntman · Post by **huntman** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 8:43 pm

i would handle this by finding a private land to hunt. Not to be a smart _ss but if i had to hunt on crown land and argue with other hunter i would rather be home spending time with my family!@

LoneWolf · Post by **LoneWolf** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 10:45 pm

huntman wrote:i would handle this by finding a private land to hunt. Not to be a smart _ss but if i had to hunt on crown land and argue with other hunter i would rather be home spending time with my family!@

And that's exactly what we did, we bought some land and got a couple of leases right next to it. We didn't need the hassles and the headaches. Even where we hunt moose and we're also gonna start deer hunting in there as well, for a change of scenery and to give the other place a break from time to time. Of all the nerve some guys will go as far as posting reserved signs in the Larose Forest for the moose hunt, yeah that's right in the Larose Forest and for a controlled hunt at that!. However signs and permanent stands don't stay up too long in there if the forest caretaker or the MNR finds them, and they do go looking. We still rent a property from the municipality to hunt moose in the Forest when we get lucky and draw a tag because of a couple of moose honey holes I know of in there. And we're also fortunate enough to have family friends who lease us 144 acres of property in the forest for the purpose to hunt moose (when we have a tag) and deer.

LW

terry-1 · Post by **terry-1** » Mon Sep 26, 2005 10:55 pm

We have alot of the same problems down here with public land. Me and a friend use to hunt some great public land bowhunting only saw and took some nice bucks there years ago. I got tired of other hunters trying to run me off the spot I hunted for 5 straight years and then some other guy would find it that fall and say its "his spot". I always offer to share the spot or only hunt it certain days but most guys were just rude and acted like they owned that spot. I go to the woods to relax not get in a fight with some high stressed fool so tend to stay away from public land now as long as I have somewhere private to go.