jandlp14

Audsley-I appreciate your opinion. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the 31/32 area, particularly near Klondyke. Essentially, none of the "gate logs" are located near a house, usually landowners place an access gate a short distance from the main house/headquarters to cut down the amount of traffic zooming past the house, the gate log is placed at this gate. I've been hunting Coues deer and Mule deer in 31/32 for 30+ years, both on public and private land. I have never been checked by G&F. I've only seen them a couple times while hunting. I know they are understaffed, and can only do so much. I can't depend on them to patrol my property. I'm not discounting what they do, many of them are friends of mine, but they are given a monumentous task each year at this time. I've said this twice, but I'll say it again--I'M NOT DENYING ANYONE ACCESS TO PUBLIC LAND!!!!!!!! 300ultramag--your maturity is evident in your reply. You are the reason people lock the gates. I'm a rancher, not a farmer. Pussy.

Never said it was "out of state" hunters, I said "out of town", this would mean people whom I/we don't know, or have never seen before. Some of you from small towns know what I mean. Do you think a "hunter" who would stoop so low as to shoot holes in a private water tank is going to take the time to sign in and out on a gate log??? I wish we had nothing to do but patrol our land, checking licence #'s and ID's, making sure everyone signed in. Probably wouldn't even need a gate log if that was the case. Unfortunately, there is work to be done, and a handful of people can't run a ranch and play "gate log enforcer" at the same time. I believe a gate log is a good idea for the responsible outdoorsmen/women who really just want to access the land for proper use, but as for the very small number of destructive idiots, thank them for the locked gates. You can usually spot them pretty easily, they are ususally the same individuals who throw beer cans out the window while they cruise down the road....."hunting". BTW, we didn't deny anyone access to anything. We just made it a lot tougher to get to. The long way.

First Post. I don't want to start off by being a jerk, but try putting yourself in my family's shoes for a second. We have a large chunk of private land (cattle ranch) in Unit 31 and 32 (Klondyke). Public land is accessible through us, or by going WAY around us. We chose to lock our gates last year, and only let family and close friends in, most of them just stay on the private part of our operation. First rifle hunt last year, we let a few hunters in, people from "out of town", whom we didn't even know. A couple of days later, while checking water troughs, we discovered someone had used one of our water storage tanks as a target. Not just one hole, probably a dozen, all the way at the bottom. These holes were patched, 4000 gallons of water was pumped back up on the mesa, not an easy or cheap fix. Never again.