# New Deer and Suspious owners



## DA REEL DADDY (Jun 7, 2005)

I am thinking about getting on a new deer lease but I am kinda of suspicious the neighbors may be hunting my feeder when I am not there. Has anyone had a similar problem? Or am I just over reacting?


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## Rusty S (Apr 6, 2006)

Depends where you are at, I've seen locals smiling on a Sunday afternoon. rs


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## firedog4$ (Aug 24, 2004)

Looks like its time to play hide a camera. Then call the G.W.


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## Rubberback (Sep 9, 2008)

I don't think your over reacting .I agree with comment above hidden camera, get proof, & let the game warden handle it from there. This situation happens all over the place & I feel your pain. Its not right . It suxs when you spend money on corn feeders etc. Drive out the gate & some local knows your not there & hunts your spot. I hate to be in this type of situation but I have found in my years of hunting it happens almost everywhere you go. I wouldn't go on another mans proberty I'd be scared of getting shot. Guess the locals feel they have the right to go where they darn well please.


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## TxDuSlayer (Jun 24, 2006)

firedog said:


> Looks like its time to play hide a camera. Then call the G.W.


X2


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## Bucksnort (Jun 29, 2004)

Happens all the time. My Dad found a tree climber overlooking his feeder that some neighbor poacher put up.


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## Ranch Dog (Dec 25, 2007)

I live in deer hunting country so I don't go home on Sunday. If you want to bullet-proof your place, particularly if you are on a new place, don't go home on Sunday morning of opening weekend. From there, be totally unpredictable. Consider it a duty with fellow lease members.

If you want to do more, especially if your landowner is not a local, have the landowner name the "Lease Boss" as an Agent (for wildlife matters) with TPWD. If the Game Warden shows up, nothing is going to happen unless someone that is legally authorized to represent the property is present. In the old days, things would start moving but with the new set of young GW guys & gals, they worry about the court room. Use the TWPD "Landowner Permission for Release of Information to Individuals" to establish your agent status. File it with the TWPD Regional Office. Biologists, now called "Natural Resources Specialists" are the keepers of the form. This form will allow you to say "Yes, I'm the Agent for the property and I want to do something about this idiot hunting on my place!"

I'm a landowner and can tell you that some landowners shouldn't be trusted either. If it smells bad, it is. Don't lease the place no matter how good it looks.


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## catchysumfishy (Jul 19, 2008)

firedog said:


> Looks like its time to play hide a camera. Then call the G.W.


Then play Hide Thuh Camera again where thuh Sun don't Shine.....That will definitely deter them! I once got tired of it in Cat Springs and i built a raggedy old ladder stand with rotten wood and painted it up real nice, i let them come and go for a few weeks and then sawed the legs of the ladder 3/4 of the way through. That next wknd we heard about a neighboring hunter that broke a leg falling out of a tree stand-GW didn't say anything when i told him about someone breaking our stand -he just smiled -winked and went on about his way! I was 21 at the time so don't do what i did! :cheers:


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## Marshman (Jul 24, 2008)

There are days, when you HOPE the wasps build a big nest in your blind! 

I personally like a large rubber snake, hung just inside the door by the tail and a string. Open the door, and it falls in your face, quite disturbing if you aren't aware it is there.....

And yes, the cameras are good too. Don't be surprised at the "visitors" you may see passing thru your place, headed north.


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## coogerpop (Sep 3, 2009)

I had a lease near Lake Summerville once.During the week I was hunting one morning when I heard voices coming thru the woods...a man and his wife walked up to the ladder going up to the blind and started to climb up. I opened the door and told them it would be a bit crowded since I only had 2 chairs.!!!! As it turned out the land owner was day leasing the property when we were not there... Got an apology but we didn't get money back......don't lease there anymore...


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## Josh5 (Jun 27, 2007)

Put a lock on your stand, then at least they won't be inside your stand. They might still be hunting your feeder though.


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## Chase4556 (Aug 26, 2008)

Josh5 said:


> Put a lock on your stand, then at least they won't be inside your stand. They might still be hunting your feeder though.


We had a problem like this on our property. I got in my stand one day(wasnt during deer season) and found a 6mm casing. No one that we know or has been on the property shoots a 6mm. We have now put locks on all the stands. At least it keeps them out of our nice stands, maybe not off our feeders though.


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## uncle dave (Jul 27, 2008)

Had a lease in east texas, we hunted in on weekends and the locals hunted it during the week and out of season.


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## catchysumfishy (Jul 19, 2008)

uncle dave said:


> Had a lease in east texas, we hunted in on weekends and the locals hunted it during the week and out of season.


That's how an East Tx lease works......


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## JDLoftis (Nov 26, 2005)

*I found 'em*

Hey Reel Daddy I found 'em. Call the Game Warden and he'll take care of them. There's about 30 empty Pearl light cans and a bunch of Newport cigarette butts in your stand though.


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## DA REEL DADDY (Jun 7, 2005)

Yes that would be them. Great work JD! I'll get you a case of beer for that one!! Thanks for the replies and the great help folks!


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## Sea-Slug (May 28, 2004)

Got in a stand real early one morning years ago in Montague County on a Tuesday Morning. Up pulls a 4-wheeler with his headlights on and parks about 100 yards from the stand and turns off his lights. I think its my buddy so I shine my flashlight at him as he is walking up the road towards the stand so he knows Im hunting there. He leaves, starts 4 wheeler and drives South. After the hunt, I look for my Bud. Cant find him anywhere. I call him, he is at work in FW and was never at the place that morning. I found where they came in through a cattle trap pen, same neighbors poached us pretty regularly.


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## EndTuition (May 24, 2004)

Had a lease in Catula, land owner insisted we let him know when we would be there. Seemed reasonable untill we started finding gut piles under the feeders. Sometimes it's the landowner.


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## justinsfa (Mar 28, 2009)

I was watching a spike under my feeder on opening morning 2 seasons ago and BAM!!!! Down he goes... Dead right under my feeder.... I waited til the guy came across the property line to get it.... Then he claims he shot it on his side of the property line and it ran over there.... 

2 weekends later, I sneak up on my feeder and there are 2 guys sitting with their backs to me hunting over it... I approached them, they said they had permission from their grandpa to hunt the property because their family had been hunting it for 50 years... Told them not to come back...

3 days later, I was off and snuck down there again.... same 2 guys sitting over the feeder... they refused to give me their names or drivers licenses... GW never called me back either.

I catch 2-3 different people each trip up there "sightseeing at night" on our place....

East Texas is getting old.... and the county made us take our gates down because the road may need to be used as an emergency entrance to a house that is 4 miles away on a blacktop road... In case their ASPHAULT road washes out and they have to use our RED DIRT road to go get the homeowner if they need a ambulance....

Its rediculous.... This will most likely be my last year... 15 years and Im finally just tired of dealing with it....


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## catchysumfishy (Jul 19, 2008)

justinsfa said:


> I was watching a spike under my feeder on opening morning 2 seasons ago and BAM!!!! Down he goes... Dead right under my feeder.... I waited til the guy came across the property line to get it.... Then he claims he shot it on his side of the property line and it ran over there....
> 
> 2 weekends later, I sneak up on my feeder and there are 2 guys sitting with their backs to me hunting over it... I approached them, they said they had permission from their grandpa to hunt the property because their family had been hunting it for 50 years... Told them not to come back...
> 
> ...


I know it's probably convenient to you but 15 years of it??


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## pngndn (Jun 19, 2009)

*getting interupted while hunting*

i was hunting in fred, tx and caught a local still hunting 75 yards from my blind. i heard what appeared to be bucks fighting. i got out of stand and walked up on a FREDNECK crouched down rattling. i asked him what the &*^% he was doing and he said hunting on my new lease. i asked what lease are you on and he said the name of a neighboring lease. i told him he was on the wrong one and gave the info to the GW..found out that he is a well known meth dealer.


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## Auer Power (Jun 16, 2009)

pngndn said:


> i was hunting in fred, tx and caught a local still hunting 75 yards from my blind. i heard what appeared to be bucks fighting. i got out of stand and walked up on a FREDNECK crouched down rattling. i asked him what the &*^% he was doing and he said hunting on my new lease. i asked what lease are you on and he said the name of a neighboring lease. i told him he was on the wrong one and gave the info to the GW..found out that he is a well known meth dealer.


Your lucky your still alive, you never know what someone like that might try.


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## sharkbait-tx70 (Jun 28, 2009)

Here is one for you. When I was younger I belive I was 16 or so I was hunting with my godfather on his 500 acres outside of Fredricksburg. We watched these two guys sneak up to his feeder and shoot a young buck. We snuck down and up to them. While they had set their rifles down to retrieve their prize I got their rifles and my godfather aproached them. He politly asked them to leave the deer and their pants with their wallets in them so the gamewarden could find them latter to return them, and they did so. I have never seen a person laugh as hard as that gamewarden did when he showed up and collected their guns and pants. DO not ever mess with an old German was all he could say. Those two got prosicuted to the full extent and the storey also made the paper...


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## justinsfa (Mar 28, 2009)

catchysumfishy said:


> I know it's probably convenient to you but 15 years of it??


Well, it has just been progressively getting worse... When my dad first got on it, it was great... no clear cuts and every road had a gate on it...

It progressively got worse with the clearing of land (which is to be expected... the owners arent in the deer hunting business, they are in the timber/paper business... well aware of that). Then the county made us take the gates down.

I ended up attending college about 30 miles away, so it was great to have it so close while I was living up there.

I got to where I knew the property like the back of my hand and we were taking some really nice deer off of it...

And the price is right to boot. Membership is $480 which is much less than alot of the other places I have looked at, and the quality of deer is much better...

Once the drilling companies started putting in pads, they made the roads better and blue-rocked most of them.... this made access much easier for people wandering around the place....

Within the last 3-4 years, the poaching and trespassing problem has gotten much worse.... and stands and feeders are starting to end up missing...

GWs are out there from time to time, but its not solving any problems. It starts to get pretty dangerous when you are dealing with people who are armed and dont really care about anything...

I mainly stay on it for my dad... Thats about his only hobby in the winter months, and I know he looks forward to hitting the woods every fall... He is fed up with it to, but its better than staying indoors all winter with Momma.... haha... I dont make it up there as much as I used to because I duck hunt so much and now have a job where I take clients on hunting trips for entertainment, so its not a big deal for me... but I know he would just sit around the house until it was warm enough to get the boat back out.

We are looking around for some other places, but are nervous about letting our place go and ending up on a crappy lease....

But, the bigger deer are getting few and far between, and now we have some outlaws that are actually paying members on the lease that blatantly break the lease rules and they have pretty much taken over the lease committee so there is no punishment.

I wont even GO into those problems....

The main problem is that we dont want to drive to the Hill Country to see maybe more, but smaller deer.... South Texas is just too far because he likes going every weekend.

Plus, we arent big drinkers, so that tends to be a problem around East Texas deer camps.... we arent big bible beaters or anything, we just like to feel a little safe when people are running around with guns and we like to keep things a little civil around the campfire, especially since my sister is an avid hunter as well...

Here are a few reasons why I have put up with it for 15 years... I cant find another place for this price that produces deer like this...


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## spur (May 30, 2004)

if you wont call game wardens who will.time to take the poachers by the cajones.get the drop on them take guns wallets and atv.than call warden.word will get around fast


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## smells like fish (Jul 6, 2009)

Opening day I was set up watching a little buck cross the road and head my direction, as he moved out of the shrubs and into my line of fire. Bam!!! he goes down hard. I jumped off my front porch mad as He**, but even more puzzled as to where the shot had come from. A few seconds later my Mom was calling asking if I could come fix a large hole in her back screen door. "Oh yea and by the way on your way up here do ya mind picking up my deer?" I had been poached by Momma...God I do love living in the sticks......


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## justinsfa (Mar 28, 2009)

spur said:


> if you wont call game wardens who will.time to take the poachers by the cajones.get the drop on them take guns wallets and atv.than call warden.word will get around fast


You gotta be real careful doing this... poachers are criminals, and alot of them wont hesitate to stick that gun right in your face...

and even if it doesnt come to that, when you are gone during the week, they will wreak havoc on your stands, feeders and camps....

Its a shame that it is like that.... is there alot of poaching everywhere else across the state??? Are the South Tx and Hill Country hunters running into the same things we do up in East Tx?


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## gordaflatsstalker (Jul 3, 2008)

We hunt in Lampasas Co. We've never had any issues with poachers. We always leave our feeders and stands up during the summer. We also kill a lot bigger deer than your average hill country buck. It's really not a bad drive from where I live, 3 and a half hours on a good day. But I like having a lease that is far away, it's like a vacation everytime you go.


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## deke (Oct 5, 2004)

I was hunting in Michigan on my uncles ranch. It was opening weekend and I have never been so scared in the woods. I thought wearing an orange vest was stupid until 10 minutes into opening day. I put mine on and an extra one I had on my head like a KKK hood! I caught one guy in the back part and asked if he crossed a fence and he said yes and acted like it was OK, I told him in Texas we shoot poachers and he left. Then I caught another guy setting up a drive on our property he had the same attitude, the next day I caught another one, and a guy that was leaning on a fence post watching a small open hardwood bottom on our land, he was going to shoot the deer on our property and go mad at me for ruining "his" spot. 

They have a rule up there, the last gut to hit the deer claims it. I would hear 3 shots, then 3 more, 3 more, and so on, as the deer ran down the line of drivers. I hunted for 2 days I was supposed to be there for four but I just wanted to get the hell out of there. Too bad because 150+ class deer are common on his place. I might try it again in the next year or so since my cousin built a house there and is living on the property, should help to cut down on the poaching.


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## DA REEL DADDY (Jun 7, 2005)

That is too bad deke. I have a brother-in-law that hunts up there. He loves it. That is long way to driver to have your hunt ruined like that.


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## DeerSlayer (May 7, 2008)

*Poachers...*

I had a lease last year in Fredericksburg, Tx and am not on it anymore for the same reason. There were poachers on our lease and I have a pretty good idea of who it was but could never prove it. When we would leave the lease we always made sure that the stands were clean (no trash or shell casings). When we would return the following weekend, there would be 7mm and .243 shell casings in the blinds. Well, the problem was that no one on our lease shot a 7mm or .243. Me and my buddy shoot 300 win mags and both our son's shoot 30-06's. I confronted the landowner about the problem who lived on the premises and he said he knew nothing about it and that he had not let anyone back there. He did have a guy who did some handywork for him fixing up things on the ranch and I suspected him of doing the poaching. It seemed like every sunday when we would be packing up to leave, he would be showing up to do some "handywork" and he was always asking when we would be returning. I never told him the truth about when we would return...I always said I wasn't sure and that I had alot of vacation time and would probably be back in 2 days (just to throw him off). My son even said while he was hunting in a stand, that he thought he saw some one stalking at the bottom of the hill and he was all dressed in black. I looked around at the end of the day for tracks but could not locate any, but either way, I am not on that lease anymore. It seems like the more I read this thread, that there are alot of people with this same problem in Fredericksburg. Im still looking for a lease right now, but I am getting "gun shy" about Fredericksburg now!


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## rambunctious (May 30, 2004)

*Lease*

On our place in So. Texas we put signs up.Seemed to work.
*Tresspassers Will Be Shot*
*Survivers Will Be Prosercuted*


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## catchysumfishy (Jul 19, 2008)

DeerSlayer said:


> I had a lease last year in Fredericksburg, Tx and am not on it anymore for the same reason. There were poachers on our lease and I have a pretty good idea of who it was but could never prove it. When we would leave the lease we always made sure that the stands were clean (no trash or shell casings). When we would return the following weekend, there would be 7mm and .243 shell casings in the blinds. Well, the problem was that no one on our lease shot a 7mm or .243. Me and my buddy shoot 300 win mags and both our son's shoot 30-06's. I confronted the landowner about the problem who lived on the premises and he said he knew nothing about it and that he had not let anyone back there. He did have a guy who did some handywork for him fixing up things on the ranch and I suspected him of doing the poaching. It seemed like every sunday when we would be packing up to leave, he would be showing up to do some "handywork" and he was always asking when we would be returning. I never told him the truth about when we would return...I always said I wasn't sure and that I had alot of vacation time and would probably be back in 2 days (just to throw him off). My son even said while he was hunting in a stand, that he thought he saw some one stalking at the bottom of the hill and he was all dressed in black. I looked around at the end of the day for tracks but could not locate any, but either way, I am not on that lease anymore. It seems like the more I read this thread, that there are alot of people with this same problem in Fredericksburg. Im still looking for a lease right now, but I am getting "gun shy" about Fredericksburg now!


Cannons fer Hill Country Deer??? :tongue: I had the same thing ONLY different :tongue:in Stonewall ,but it turned out to be the land owners grandson that took over when Mr. Wesley Eckhardt past away. Mr. Eckhardt had this nice little .22 hornet that he used when hunting with me and after he past away i started finding .22 hornet casings in my stands-Kinda rare casing and i grabbed up 6 that were in my stand,drove up to the ranch house "where his chicken chit Grandson had moved into" and when he walked over to my truck to ask me how we were doing , i opened my hand up -showed him the fresh brass and asked him *** then hit him square in the chest with that handful of brass! His grandfather would be rolling in his grave if he knew his Grandson had been this dis respectful to his hunters! I stepped away from that place two years ago and had managed it out for 9 years-it is what it is....


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## tdgal (Jun 16, 2009)

We have property close to Texarkana and we tried to hunt it for several years but gave up because we were having this same problem. We finally leased to a highly recommend local older hunter and his grandson.
The first year they ran 76 hunters off our place. The second year it was down to 42 hunters the third year with help from the GW only 3. He has built quality stands and food plots and invites us to hunt with him and grandson. They have only killed a couple of does and a few cull bucks. They have shown us some nice pics of some nice young bucks that will be shooters in a couple of years.
If you have that feeling that someone is poaching or trespassing they probably are


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## el_pescadore (May 8, 2007)

I've got alot of good stories on this subject, but I'll share one a partner related lately. I won't name the county, but after a little spying and snooping videos showed the border patrol agents were all over thier place. When they were confronted, violence almost ensued. They (father and son) were arrested for assult of a federal agent. The incriminating evidence was destroyed, and the assult cases are still pending. Before they could make bond, thier ATV's were stolen and thier RV vandelized beyond repair. Be careful in S. Texas, the "good guys" are often the bad guys.


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