Guy on a Gator: The New Predator

Image by A. Larrimore

Remember this: It is always a good idea to have your bases covered before planting a foot on foreign terrain.

I had to sit with this one a while. By the time you finish reading this you are gonna have to sit with it a while as well. 

(This is information to remember: a dark SUV found trespassing onto unsuspecting property owners' land to place cameras to track deer as caught on another device without trespasser knowing it.)

As people who hunt, fish, or do the outdoor sports, we should be well aware that the Grim Reaper is patiently waiting in the wings for our turn to punch the old time clock and get in his boat to darker, greener, pastures. There are also others that are not from the spiritual realm that lay-in-wait.

While we are waiting, lets talk about the new predator. 

This predator I speak of comes in the form of other hunters, land brokers, real estate agents, and anyone else that is looking to capitalize on some elderly person's mental deterioration or impending poverty be it a scam or not. Sometimes this poverty or homelessness is imposed by unscrupulous people that trick these elderly people into signing away their rights and security for a fast payday, or to steal a slice of a landlocked area that is in great demand. Calling such people vultures doesn't give it justice. 

There are the real estate people, including those that claim they can put your land up as a hunting preserve to sale, that send workers out to the local land and deeds office to see who is about to die and whether they can be approached to sell. The other tactic they use is somehow getting a cell phone number to text message or cold call and sending things to e-mails when no one has not requested solicitation.

Have you ever received e-mails where you thought you might have requested or involved yourself in something only to find out that you didn't do anything but there it is....waiting on your panic and lightning fast response to figure it out. This is what the elderly are subjected to and what their caretakers have to stay vigilant on lest the poor old dying soul be left to the caprice of the world because of dementia and a cruel soulless person(s). 

One could ponder that this is their Karma. Maybe they did bad things in their life, treated people cruelly, or kicks small dogs and cats. 

Wait until you uncover a parent has been ripped off of $20,000 or more by some person getting Lyft rides in Canada. Then the elderly person has to take out a loan to cover their debt and simultaneously hide this while going into denial and blaming someone else for the money being taken/given away. 

Have you asked your Nanna which K-pop singer she is married to and if she has been sending him money because his management is holding him hostage? Or maybe its an aunt that has been seduced into signing a purchasing contract on a million dollar mansion where the K-pop star claims she can live in her old age while he travels the world singing to the masses?

You better go right now and check on your people because there might be 120 Kneau Reeves love bombing the death and their money out of them on Tiktok because Kneau is broke. The Matrix really took a toll on him.

For every elderly person, the scammer finds out their weakness and some aren't on the internet. They sit in small country eateries checking pulses and looking up obituaries trying to find out if there is an heir or two that could block their evil plans. 

What has brought all this own? The recent story out of Conway of some dastardly healthcare worker, in the absence of the out-of-state relative, somehow got title and monies signed over to her, and thieved away with the patient's livelihood without telling the relative her parent is dead for three days. This perpetrator worked through a healthcare business. 

I already ran into this with a senior living rehabilitation center. The facility wanted an audit of Patient Zero's financials even though his insurance was paying for the two week stay.  The facility was suppose to admit Patient Zero for two weeks for physical therapy and tried to diaper-lock him in a wheelchair, not let him walk or let him leave his room due to a contagious cold going through the facility. This place said he could leave when he wanted to and when the two weeks were up they were trying to hold onto him. It became a potential confrontation. 

What the hell does this have to do with hunting? Okay, you ask. 

A day ago I am out in a property, where hunting leases are given, cutting grass. It is a small place but a nice place especially if you want peace and quiet to meander to sit in the woods. I turn toward the soy bean field with the mower when I see something moving over the six acre field on that side. I realize it is a person and that they have wandered over onto the property, heading for the deer that are standing out in the field like a dumb herd of cattle. I am unaware someone has put a deer stand in a tree there.  

I begin to yell across the six acre field that I see him and ask if he has permission. At this point, the person squats down in the soy beans so he can hide himself. He must have called the person on the zippity-doo gator because the ATV comes back.

The guy on the Gator pulls up on me. He tells me who he is. My name is Zippity-Doo from the S-curve area.

I asked him did he know the guy in the field? Yes.

I ask did he have a hunting lease or pay for land rental? No, I have not signed or paid anything yet. 

Here he is telling me that he has no instruction on what he can and cannot do in this location.

He doesn't have anything on paper or a receipt that he has done any of the things to secure his argument yet he is out there with friends with guns walking all over the place. He places his right for himself to hunt on a verbal agreement with a person that has had health problems that he is unaware of, or so he says. This verbal agreement that has no witness or verification doesn't stipulate any other person that is brought to the location to take part in hunting activities. He claimed to know the property owner. He tells me that he saw the property owner at this local eating place and started his campaign on how to access the property because he is desperate to get into that area by hook or crook. 

When a man tells me he will come back and pick up rocks, that tells me he has absolutely no standard on his behavior and is willing to sell himself out to get what he thinks he wants, or lie his way into getting the instant gratification of killing a deer when the memory of it is now sullied. All this just to access a property.

There is a lot of ways to do things. This isn't one of them. 

I realized he is potentially the same guy, sitting in his gator, trying to convince me that he is a noble hunter when he was out in these dirt roads trespassing to place cameras to monitor a herd of deer on other people's land without the property owners knowing it. I just happened to be the one seeing him do it with evidence.

Where is the honor in that? Who raised this guy? Better yet, who is he emulating because someone failed and failed epically.

I excused myself to go get the elderly property owner. The property owner came out and I asked the guy in front of the property owner about him hunting. Property owner said that he said he could but also told him he wasn't going to be liable for the hunter, or anyone else doing themselves harm while out in the field. 

This is the intersection where this turns South. When a elderly property owner gives a verbal okay from another era to a hunter for them to hunt in a time where verbal agreements aren't the best foundation to stand on. This verbal agreement takes a turn because instructions and specifics are not documents and the verbal yes to one becomes a verbal yes to anyone that wasn't there for the conversation. Those other people, you have no idea what caliber of person they are and if they will honor the original verbal agreement. You have no idea of a person's criminal past either if they have one, or what they have been into. You are just going on the word of the one you know and not the one you don't.

This person decided to go ahead and put up deer stands, invite people, and do what he wanted in the absence of anything tangible. Is that not the best way to take advance? No boundaries. No limits. No specifics. 

He even tried to convince me he was managing something there. I told him he was on someone else's property that a farmer planted soy beans and all he did was pull up, put up a stand and shoot a deer off of it. He put no effort in it other than to grunt and groin putting up  a stand that wasn't even that high. The audacity of some people. 

If someone accidentally shoots a person, gets bite by a rattler, or should fall out a tree or break a leg, then they or someone they know will want to race up to a lawyer's office and try to put a claim in and hold the land owner responsible even though that land owner might be cognitively compromised in some way.

I talk to this guy about signing a hunting lease with specifics so the hunter on the other plot isn't menaced. I ask him for a number to call to let him know when the paperwork is ready. He leaves and I go back to mowing. I eventually finish and go back to the house. I sit down and try to change the stipulations for locations and need to talk to this wanker. I call the number he has given me. It goes to some young man that doesn't have a clue what is going on and why he is getting the phone calls. Now I have been mislead and deceived.

Zippity-Do on the gator informed me that per the land owner that he discussed his presence out on the main farm and he reported the hunter in the back was okay with it. I was not informed and circumvented around by this young man in the stead of the property owner just coming back from a doctor because he was emotional for three days prior and doing things out of the ordinary. The doctor decided to give him treatment and hope it cleared up the problem lest there might be a reoccurring silent stroke. Before I could determine the nature of this situation, I have another unknown person running amuck in an area the property owner has been know to watch movement and shoot a 308 in that area at deer by the place the young man put a deer stand. In low light that is a recipe for disaster. I don't want to come back and find a body. If it can be avoided, avoid it. 

This is where communication is key. Key, I said. So is safety.

So now I got someone hiding in a soybean field, another one trying to convince me of all the hunting jargon bird-spit-swallow and then to make it worse for himself give me a bogus number to someone else that has no clue what is going on. He still has no signed hunting lease, a paid receipt but I got his treestand in the tree. The treestand at this point is trespassing. Smirk.

On top of this, Zippity-Do tells me that he spoke to the hunter in the back and that guy is okay with it. That guy didn't say nothing to me about getting a call so I sent him a voice mail. Guess what? He wasn't okay with what that guy was doing. So now I got another deception and another hunter not saying a word to me when something is amiss. This makes me think long and hard on next year's seasons. 

Hunters will screw the pooch on their self.

Whatever happened to truth, justice, and the American way?  Meh. 

This doesn't make sense to me that a elderly property own would cause that much dissension on his own land  that could cause him legal problems unless he just doesn't grasp it. He doesn't discern the legalities or the danger to self or others.

Does he need a situation where a SCDNR officer now has to investigate a shooting/death on his land that was executed by imbeciles that have nothing in their hands to refute their claims? 

I am thinking this person was doing what he thought was lowkey get-in, shoot the deer, and get-out then tell the property owner he never shot a thing so he could get out of signing an agreement and absconding with a dead deer to never pay for the hunting lease. I wouldn't be surprised if he fabricate a story on the way he epically went out to hunt the deer and post it on some page at Facebook. 

It is tough being a female and dealing with men. 

My headache is as wide as the Grand Canyon and I haven't even see it yet.

Image by Adam Zubek-Nizol

~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Once Upon A Time In A Hunting Stand

Remember this: Once upon a time in a hunting stand there was a woman who thought...….

During one of my first re-con sitting marathons in the deer stand, I sat back in the white faux leather chair to ease my mind. The cobwebs were quickly swept away as I could hear the sounds of things moving in the swamp. I knew whatever was in there was investigating from the bush so I paid no never mind. It would either come out or not. I was maintaining my coolness while mentally making a closer inspection of the machine of merchandising and sport shows.

The place these thoughts were coming from was the ever increasing concern that my concept of hunting could be indirectly/directly influenced by media and the messages it sends through advertising or informative hunting shows. I asked myself some questions.

How has media influence me positively or negative in my hunting endeavors? What messages have I received from exposing myself to these constructs?

Hunting does support a huge amounts of individuals and their families. On the other hand there are people that feed money into the machine only to get poorer. The discerning huntress has to navigate through this forest to find the trail that leads to a personal defining viewpoint she is comfortable  living with. No apologies or explanations should be required. It is what it is.

I thought about the big business of merchandising.
Do you often ask yourself when buying something is it a necessity? Is it a relevant product? Am I going to benefit from this purchase or will it make things too easy?

 
To me this is like picking up a book and reading the last chapter while skipping the body of the text.
I personally do not buy a lot of the things necessary to improve my hunting. Nor do I want all the information that could be available to make my hunting experience so easy that I get bored of it then quit. I like a more natural approach to stalking deer or in the case of a stand: sit and wait. I do not use scent blockers because I have found that I actually like a level of difficulty to outsmarting a buck.
On a more personal note as compared to information I gleaned from informative hunting shows, I have noticed the following. Even though this is definitely not the norm it seems to work for me.
Most of the time I spray a Honeysuckle scent on because wild jasmine grows in my hunting spot. Washing in a sodium bath followed by a floral underarm deodorant doesn't bother the deer either. I have noted they will smell and react to a male before they will a female. Also not eating tons of meat so it can ooze out your pores is another habit I have. If you don't smell like a meat eater they don't see you as a threat. I remember seeing the guy who studied wolves even said he had to feast like wolves by eating liver for them to smell and accept him. Its a different way of looking at the situation for sure. Even though this is contrary to known information on how someone should hunt is it wrong? Probably not. Are other peoples' ways of doing things wrong? No. Whatever works for the individual or gives them confidence is probably not a bad thing. No way of doing it is created equal.

I recently had a conversation with a nice hunter from England concerning the changing requirements of guns being used during fowl hunting. One interesting comment was on whatever was the fashion at the time. Can hunting be fashionable or unfashionable? Why not. This could pertain to the weapon of choice, bullets, dogs, boots, vehicles, etc. At the core of it is merchandising for profit.

In some countries, people that hunt dress up in fashionable regalia to go hunting. Depending on what the fashion of the moment is, that is what you will enjoy. Is it required? It would depend on who you associate with or the club. Is there something wrong with hunting clubs having a level or fashionable decorum? Certainly not. You always retain the option of saying yes or no. These are more formal social events geared to enjoy hunting but also hold fellowship with other like minded souls. In other countries, people that hunt will dress up like commandos with high powered weapons to enjoy their time. In other parts of the world you might find the lone hunter sitting out in a deer stand much like me with a pair of blue jeans and a red hoodie on waiting to claim that nights supper if you're lucky.

Even though each one of these scenarios is different are any of them wrong? I would say no. One would have to extend to the other a certain amount of respect for their way of doing things because it is the custom or the requirement. Its like the old saying goes, when a man is in a strange land, he should do as the locals do so as to not insult anyone which could cause his death.

I knew that this perspective stemmed from the many hunting based activities that existed outside of hunting in the actual woods. I thought of the hunting expos I had attended with rude people, vendors that sized clients up based on looks without offering a service, or the way women were sold the more prettier things such as clothes or ambience instead of something concrete.

My thoughts on this were not negative but more of a thoughtful exploration on how I perceived these issues. I would hope that others would examine these as well. It is something to think about.


~Courtesy of the AOFH~

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