Anymore, it's almost a losing battle when you don't live on the land. My wife's uncle owns about 600 acres in Eastern KY, and he's had so much trouble from poachers that he's debating selling the land at a loss just to get out of it. He's had the land for about 10 years, and we all sort of tried to manage it for a little quality hunting, turkey and deer. We gave up after last year.
We've had to re-do the fencing on certain areas of the farm about 10 times in the last 5 years. He's had tree stands stolen, trees cut down to block the road and quad paths and other access areas, someone toilet papered a 200 acre field (our main hunting area), they burned a hunting blind, and to top it all off, last year, they took Clorox and dumped it in all of the mineral licks that he'd put in, under all of the tree stands, in the two small ponds, on any tree they could find that was rubbed and in the scrapes too.
He's got it posted, notified the sheriffs and DNR officers, and spread the word among the locals. The problem with the locals is that all of the land down there has been owned by the same families for generations. When the older generations dies, the youngsters started selling the land. As the new owners take possesion and post the property, the locals get pissed about not having any access anymore. One of the old timers down there was griping about a new owner last year, saying that "I've hunted on that land for 50 years, and just cause there's a new owner and they posted it, I'm still gonna hunt there anytime I want, whether they like it or not. They've got no right to deny us access." We told him that they have the right to do whatever they want with their land, and it doesn't matter if he likes it. Uncle Alan then informed all of the locals that were present to stay off his land unless they want to go to jail.
Now he goes down there every week or weekend or so just to have a presence around, that way the locals never know when he's going to be there. He put a camper up in the main field to stay in too. It's been there about 6 months, last week, he found it flipped over and trashed. Now he says that he's going to start shooting on sight (told us that, not them), since the police can't seem to do anything about it. It's a very rural area, so it's easy to get away with stuff. We find headless carcasses all of the time throughout the late summer through spring, depending on when the racks drop off. People insist that they are hunting for food, since they are poor. Funny thing, I didn't know you could eat antlers.
