A pretty silly thing to believe either way. I would guess those landowners who live in immediate proximity to a city, have more “city folk” trespassing on their land; for those who live out in the boonies, it is the local crowd. With a few exceptions of the popular “hunting spots”, most likely the further away from the city your land is, the more local the problem gets and vice versa. Just because of the numbers, can’t see it working otherwise.
I only know a few landowners around here (Peace River area), rather there are only a few quarters of land that I sometimes spend my time on. And I am sure there are landowners in this area who would say otherwise because it’s one of those “popular hunting spots”, but on these particular quarters the problem is almost exclusively “local”, and the folk doing bad things are not even from the town, but from the county or from a county next to that one. In fact, in one case last year and the worst I have seen so far, it was the guy next door, so to speak, who shot up a bunch of elk and only took one of them. He dragged the rest of them with his quad out of view, but I guess he didn’t think of the birds making a fuss and that there could be someone hunting on that piece of land with no house on it. I mean there are just dumb people out there. Another funny thing is that some of them are dumb enough to do their hunting where they shouldn’t in their company trucks, lol. Back in September-October, I “caught” a dude hunting out of a Richardson Pioneer truck. There were a few others in the few years past.
The fact everyone knows each other is also not exactly a fact. One guy is probably 90 or something years old and lived on his quarter most of his life. He doesn’t know half the people who own land around his. Probably partially because it had been sold and bought a few times in his lifetime; and then some of it is owned by farmers living in another county whom he sees seeding, spraying and combining the fields, so about three or four times a year and always in the cabin. A few years ago he was shot at unintentionally while standing next to his house. The bullet just missed him. After he drove out to the field to approach the guy, the guy had to literally be slapped by the his wife who was hunting with him back into his senses and admit the guilt and apologize. The guy was local. (This one is the landowner’s story, from his mouth to my ears).
I also find it hilarious when after being asked what the person is doing here and if they have permission to be here, most say they do, in fact, have permission, and say some random name they got the permission from. “Oh yeah, it’s John.” Some have it in them to continue the narrative even after being confronted “No? Oh, John is the guy who rents the field.” “No? Well, that’s the legal land description he gave me!”
Two or three years ago, there was a dog chasing a buck before he was shot after lights out, all caught on trail camera. The two guys who drove into a swathed field were not recognized by the landowner but were by someone else as residents of the same county. Then there was a guy who drove over the swaths all the way to the other end of the field to load in a doe and he was a “towny”.
And I am not even a landowner to have these stories I witnessed myself in the past 4-5 years. In this period of time, I also met one landowner who I am sure would be certified as insane if he was tested and surely prescribed some serious medications; this opinion was also confirmed to me by the guy leasing a huge chunk of land around his quarter.
Long story short, it’s pretty shortsighted to believe that one group of people is worse than the other because of where they live. It’s probably about the location. I am pretty sure people are more or less equally crazy, regardless of where they reside. And both groups depend on each other: some folks grow crops/cattle for others to buy; some folks built machines for others to use; and so on. It’s not rocket silence. Neither could have the livelihood they do without existence of another.
Edit: holy smokes it turned out to be long post.
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