I appreciate you coming on here and discussing this stuff, so I hope it doesn’t appear that I’m coming at you here-
But your accounts of rampant trespassing (along with much worse crimes) are painting a picture of general lawlessness in your part of the state. With elected position, is it a priority of yours to fix that problem? That seems like a way bigger issue than the impact on real estate values caused by corner crossing being legal.
I think people on HT tend to under estimate the number of trespassers. Most of the people on HT are likely not law breakers and for the most part hunting public in stead of cursing road on mostly private. For the most part they never see what happens on private land. Ranchers on the other hand tend to over estimate the percentage of trespassers, because often the only hunters they deal with are the ones they know and the ones that are trespassing. Real easy to get a jaded view of the average Joe hunter when the only average Joe's you interact with are the ones that are trespassing.
I can see where some ranchers would be worried about more trespassing with CC. While most of the trespassing I deal with is of the blast and dash from the county road kind, I find at least some evidence of where people use legal public access from public land to trespass every year. Sometimes it is minor, like the tracks I found in the snow, guy was maybe fifty feet onto private, You could see where he likely stopped and checked his OnX, realized he was on private and then made a beeline back to the public. I would never press charges on that guy. On the other end of the spectrum was the guy that placed a few five gallon buckets of corn on our private and then placed a stand on the public where he could cover any deer on the corn. Never did catch that guy, but if I had, I would have pressed every charge I could. One time caught two guys that parked on the public, but were well off, They claimed they were still on public, but they were more than a mile off. Charged them. Part of the issue is that virtually every trespasser you catch claims that they thought they were hunting public in an attempt to not get charged. When you hear this excuse every time, eventually you will come to the conclusion that the public land hunters are the problem.
I could easily see where Eric's son could have been threatened. Dealing with trespassers is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get. Over the years I have had people apologize, threaten me, spin elaborate lies, try to bribe me and call me racist.
As for the effect of CC on property values, I can see Eric's logic. A friend of mine just had a property appraised. Appraiser told him if the property has elk, you can add another 50 to 100 percent on the value. I could see were CC would scare some buyers away from a checker board property in favor of others, but on the other had having access to public land even if the public is accessible to the general public is a plus to other buyers. I suspect that it is too soon to tell what the effect of CC will be on the land market and even later on the effect of CC will be so sight specific that over all it will be hard to see a difference.
