A guy buys a chunk of land. Previous to his purchase, the railroad easment on the property was used by local folks to get to and from great fishing and hunting locations.
Guy buys the land, catches people trespassing to get to these locations like they did before his purchase, and swiftly gives them the boot, and is none too kind about it.
The property is in SW Montana, the land owner is from Seattle.
Guide Brent Taylor said that for years he has walked the railroad tracks near the Poindexter Slough fishing access to reach fishing holes on the Beaverhead. But this spring, he says, he has been harassed. Barbed wire has been strung, and “no trespassing” signs are plastered on railroad bridges.
(snip)
Seattle businessman Mike Philpott, who recently bought 86 acres in the area, said trespassers have been on his property each time he has visited.
“There were hunting guides from Dillon taking people on guided hunts on my property,” Philpott told The Montana Standard in a telephone interview Friday. “Somebody had built a deer stand in one of the trees.”
Railroad tracks bisect Philpott’s property, a river-bottom wetland that he says he bought for hunting and fishing. Montana regulations say that tracks are private property and may not be used for stream access.
Philpott acknowledges the public has a right to use the Beaverhead River, but he objects to trespassing on railroad property to reach it.
I feel for both parties here. The locals have become accustomed to using the easement to get to their favorite game spots then, all of a sudden this outside guy comes in and tells you you can’t anymore.
But Philpott has a right to tell anyone he wants to get the hell off his land. He didn’t buy this decent sized dirt plot in some whacked out rainforest scheme to keep humans from desecrating it, he bought it so that he could hunt and fish on his own property.
As much as can’t stand outsiders coming and mucking things up for me, it is Philpott’s land. In my opinion, which is also the legal opinion, the locals are SOL. And I don’t know if it just the article, but these Dillon folks are a lot whinier than the Montanians I know.
I mean what the hell is this line about?
“It’s a little … tougher to get down to the river,” Taylor said. “You pretty much have to rip your waders to get through here.”
Dude, you’re crossing a barbed wire fence that was purpose built to keep your ass out. What part of “No Trespassing” does this jackass not understand?
Philpott is a lot nicer than I would be. Dude would be lucky if I didn’t have Indiana Jones style pitfall traps set on just the other side of the fence.
Here’s the other problem: in most states, if the landowner continued to allow people to trespass, just ’cause he’s a nice guy, eventually somebody will successfully be able to bring a suit that makes the easement permanently available to everyone who wants to walk down to the river, etc., etc. So unless the landowner’s a fool, he HAS to put up the signs and wire.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
My dad is from the far Western edge of Arkansas. Many years ago he bought about 200 acres of land in Oklahoma, just across the river from the town he grew up in. He wanted it for a place to build his retirement home.
The locals had a habit of using part of it for a dumping ground, hunting on it, cutting firewood, letting their cows graze on it, etc.
So he put up a fence. And ‘no trespassing’ signs.
Every time he’d come back for a visit, he’d find more trash dumped, cut down trees, fences cut, and other people’s cows, etc.
When he retired and moved there full time, he put a stop to it (mostly, he still finds his fences cut and neighbor’s cows grazing on his land).
The locals kept complaining to him and others about his evil-ness in not allowing them to use his land, like they’d been doing.
He says ‘it’s my land, if I want you to leave it alone, you leave it alone or I’ll tear up your land like you’re tewaring mine up’.
Since he’s got a bulldozer, dump truck, backhoe, etc., he can make good on his promise… 🙂
I have no sympathy for the yahoo’s in Montana. It doesn’t matter what the previous owners of property let you do with that property, if the new owners don’t want you doing it, you need to stop.
It’s called respect for others, and in this current society, it seems in short supply.
On the flip side, Montana has changed. What used to be large holdings where the ranchers didn’t care if you trespassed to fish or hunt, as long as their cattle weren’t affected, have turned into a mishmosh of little holdings, some friendly to hunters, some not.
There are stories of antihunting and antigun HollyWould stars coming up and buying selectively so that they can end access to entire Wilderness areas.
A good number of the folk who live in Montana, which has a very inhospitible climate, do so because they have (or had) the freedom to hunt and fish pretty much wherever they wanted.
That’s rapidly going away, and now comes the backlash.
Rosie O’Donnel was one of those swinging moneybags there, and bought a ranch but used to come into town every day to an ice cream parlor, where she would gorge herself. The locals, who used the ice cream parlor as their primary gathering place, eventually got tired of her tirades and started telling her off when she ranted at them.
She bought the ice cream parlor from it’s out-of-town owner, and started 86-ing anyone who told her to STFU.
The towns people ALL went somewhere else, and the ice cream parlor went broke and she had to close it.
Such is the case here, a case of out-of-towners versus locals. It’s been ever thus. It will ever be thus.
BTW, I don’t have much sympathy for the guides tresspassing, they should have offered to pay for those rights as part of their business expenses. I do think it’s sad that the kids can’t fish the hole anymore.
Why doesn’t he just give them a round-about way to get to where they want to go? Yeah, it’s his land and he can do what he wants. But, it’s often better to invite them in for a coffee and a chat.
Kinda hard to dig tiger pits on railroad tracks.
I do wonder why the guides don’t just ask and offer to pay to use the land.
Locals getting hacked off when a new landowner decides he doesn’t like folks traipsing across his land on a route the old owner didn’t mind is a universal phenomenon-city, rural, wilderness-doesn’t really matter.