I think a lot of these big timber companies are in large part also bluffing with their access permits. In my county, a citizen needs a permit to walk or touch half the land in the county. First off, state law required forestland to be conspicuously posted, and I doubt slapping a few signs on gates is legally sufficient when you own half a county with hundreds of miles of property line. Do you really think a company has exclusive use of half of all the land--every road, every driveway, every acre?
Behind the scenes these main logging roads have all sorts of easements on them with the state DNR. Publically companies say those are for "forestry use only" but have they gone back and read them all? I know where companies have had to roll back their permit areas because they were requiring permits on roads controlled by someone else. Dig deeper and more of that is bound to be found.
My county auditor and assessor are putting those old documents online right now. I've found one easement that crosses a couple miles of Big W and access a landlocked section of DNR. Guess what, that easement (from the early 70's when they didn't care about regular folks using roads) says nothing about limiting the public or only being for "forestry use". It says it is for "purposes of providing access to and from lands now owned or hereafter acquired by the state." Nowadays companies make sure that they exclude the public specifically from new easements, but not older ones. If you've got a landlocked piece you want to hunt, take a trip to the courthouse, check for any state or federal easements and carry a copy with you.
