Whatever you do, get out of your truck as little as possible. That end justifies all means.

Thank God for smart phones! You'd think these dumbasses would wake up and realize everyone has a camcorder in their pocket now. The other night after walking two miles back to the vehicle, I find the gate down and some vehicle had driven right through past the BMA sign that says no vehicles. Grrr! Wait ... here comes a set of headlights up the coulee. I pull out my phone, push video record, and put it in my shirt pocket with lens pointed out. Then I stand in the driveway and wait to confront. False alarm. It was the landowner out chasing some loose cattle back across the fence from neighbour's property.
 
Now you know why I prefer to get away from the roads and find a place where I can sit and watch. However, due to medical issues I can't walk the hills as much as I used to plus packing weight puts me out of shape and aging issues are catching up with me fast. Now I sometimes park somewhere and watch until I see something move and get out and go after it if I can.
 
I took one of the kids out yesterday afternoon to look for critters. I was glassing a spot that used to hold elk prior to the Pine Gulch Fire last year. It’s still a little crispy. I did glass up one thing, though, over a mile from the nearest road.…

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I’ve never seen so many quads/ATVs/SxSs/whatever’s as I did this season. It was busy, in general, and the road hunters abound as ever, but the number of trucks towing trailers or with these things loaded in the bed seemed to have increased exponentially.

Never understood glassing rolling country from a high spot in the road where you’re lucky to see half the huntable area, if even that.
 
I guess Im just to old for the times and just dont get it
The reason or one of the main reasons I love hunting, fishing is to get away from concrete and all that come with it cars, trucks, customers construction sites
Hanging on the side of a tree here in Pa, sending a fly to see if a fish will rise
Hiking back 5 miles at 8000 plus ft solo is one of the physically and mentally hardest things Ive ever done in my life and also one of the most soul satisfying and I just cant wait for the next time
 
I’ve never seen so many quads/ATVs/SxSs/whatever’s as I did this season. It was busy, in general, and the road hunters abound as ever, but the number of trucks towing trailers or with these things loaded in the bed seemed to have increased exponentially.

Never understood glassing rolling country from a high spot in the road where you’re lucky to see half the huntable area, if even that.
It's all about the toys. Gotta have em. Different gun or scope for every day of the week, newest range finder binoculars, wind meters, drones, etc., etc., etc. Most of these guys just gotta have the show. Real hunting is not a priority. It seems such an oxymoron that the sport that's supposed to exemify pitting man against nature one-on-one has become so utterly artificial. I hunted elk in SW Montana opener and felt like it would have been less plastic watching the Indie 500 ... at the stadium!
 
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No trying to get you fired up again, but you’ve got me curious as to what happened.
Well there’s a little piece of public that we walked in to well before light. It’s maybe a mile walk to the best glassing spot. There’s an old road in that piece, but it only connects to the CR at a gate on someone’s property….unless you brush bust 100 yards or so around the edge of the property.

So wouldn’t you know it, 3 trucks came rolling in right at shooting light and perched themselves right on the ridgetop above us.
I walked up and asked one driver (politely cuz I thought maybe they owned that little private piece) where they came in from. He said he just drove around the private cuz “people do it all the time.” We left for Plan B

Hiked just a bit off the road to glass this pond that sits just on public. It’s about 3/4 mile from the road at the end of a long draw. Again, there’s a seldom-used 2-track in the bottom of that canyon that connects somebody’s land to that pond. Well some other brainiac had driven around that gate too all the way through the draw and was parked like 150 yards from the pond.

Then we had a plan C that went similarly. Ha.

But whatever. “Road hunting” is something that comes with it, and I can factor that in to my plans. Cheaters stick in my craw.
 
I saw a comment about the new and perhaps younger and onset generation of hunters maybe being the problem….

The only people my age I know personally who don’t know how to hike hard, sit still, glass long, embark on patient stalks, and park the damn truck are the guys I know who grew up hunting and where taught by men born in the 50’s.

Broad strokes? yes, I know. so sue me.
 
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I saw a comment about the new and perhaps younger and onset generation of hunters maybe being the problem….

The only people my age I know personally who don’t know how to hike hard, sit still, glass long, embark on patient stalks, and park the damn truck are the guys I know who grew up hunting and where taught by men born in the 50’s.

Broad strokes? yes, I know. so sue me.
As a whole, I would agree with you in that adult onset hunters tend to be better behaved than those who grew up hunting. It appears the heritage of hunting itself wasn’t the only one passed down.
 
My sister in law was still hunting around the edge of a swamp this fall and had a guy come up behind her in the thick woods and say, "are you just going to stand there? I'm going that way."
On a brighter note, that's the only bit of dumbassery I've heard of this year, in my neighborhood. Aside from one or two folks not wearing blaze (new law), people have been polite and well behaved.
 
Hunters and concerned citizens need to take an active roll in reporting violations. I'd wager 95% of people that witness a violation do nothing.

One dude covering an area that's 250k-500k acres can't solve much without help from the public.
 
Well there’s a little piece of public that we walked in to well before light. It’s maybe a mile walk to the best glassing spot. There’s an old road in that piece, but it only connects to the CR at a gate on someone’s property….unless you brush bust 100 yards or so around the edge of the property.

So wouldn’t you know it, 3 trucks came rolling in right at shooting light and perched themselves right on the ridgetop above us.
I walked up and asked one driver (politely cuz I thought maybe they owned that little private piece) where they came in from. He said he just drove around the private cuz “people do it all the time.” We left for Plan B

Hiked just a bit off the road to glass this pond that sits just on public. It’s about 3/4 mile from the road at the end of a long draw. Again, there’s a seldom-used 2-track in the bottom of that canyon that connects somebody’s land to that pond. Well some other brainiac had driven around that gate too all the way through the draw and was parked like 150 yards from the pond.

Then we had a plan C that went similarly. Ha.

But whatever. “Road hunting” is something that comes with it, and I can factor that in to my plans. Cheaters stick in my craw.
An all too familiar story I’m afraid. Unless a person heads out directly from their home they most likely used a road and vehicle to get them someplace. Its how far they continue to push it that irritates me. When I see an abandoned two track that doesn’t look like it’s been traveled on in years, I generally think its worth a walk. I‘m often amazed at fresh tire tracks where you wouldn’t think anyone in their right mind would drive a vehicle. I’d be curious to know how many of those two tracks started by a person who just didn’t feel like walking somewhere vs a legitimate purpose. I know of a great little honey hole only a few hundred yards from a logging road. It was a fairly easy walk into the little basin that always held deer, until a guy decided he needed a quad trail all the way into it so he didn’t have to walk. The sign in there is almost non-existent now. Sorry your hunt got ruined.
 
The thread title is appropriate. The ends justify the means. I guess illegally throwing a bunch of spikes on a closed trail/road is somehow better than illegally riding on the closed trail/road with a truck or atv? Until the sorry shit legally riding a horse in there has a horse step on it and goes for a ride? :rolleyes: Or the person legally walking their dog on the trail gets to pull that crap out of a paw?
 
Hunters and concerned citizens need to take an active roll in reporting violations.
This.

Last year I hunted a pretty popular area for elk. This idiot on his Jeep had his gun out and was aiming at this little elk calf that had run onto the corner of private land to escape a shoot out. His hunting partner got out and tried to haze the calf to get it onto public so he could shoot it. We parked and watched so I could get pictures, video and a waypoint. While doing this the hunter got annoyed and tried to tell us to leave. We had to drive to get signal and call the game warden. The game warden headed out there but I don't know if he confronted them or not. The next day we talked to some hunters and they said they watched the guy on the Jeep shoot the calf and drag it under the fence quick. They thought it was funny and didn't call the warden or do anything. It's disappointing that some hunters will often look the other way.
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Last day of big game season today and I drove to BMA property just outside town late in the afternoon to see if the dogs could find a pheasant. What I found was a local Montana slob hunter driving out right past the sign that says no vehicles. I made a big point of making sure he saw me taking a photo with my phone as he drove by. I have access to game warden's personal cell phone. He had the image in seconds. I hope they bust the bum.

Speaking of slobs, coming out my dogs found somebody's gutless method mess in the dry creek bottom ... not 150 feet from the road ... and less than three miles from a county transfer station dumpster. What kind of shit-for-brains would obviously shoot a deer from the road, almost on the road, and then make a total mess of it skinning and boning it down in that jungle of tall weeds and leaves. Some twit that watches too much Outdoors Channel.
 

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