-Speaking on a topic relating to this. A buddy that I go to school with lives down there with his family on a 1500 acre farm. Lots of birds on it and last week they caught 10 guys in their corn fields in lay out blinds on POSTED LAND. I have a feeling that some more land down there will continue to get locked up.
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YAKIMA, Wash. — I received an email from a disgruntled landowner the other da
y asking if I might remind hunters to be respectful of other people’s property. He said he owns some land — in the Lower Valley, I suspect, but he didn’t say — that has a drain running through it. In his message he makes it quite clear he is getting tired of hunters driving through his alfalfa field to get to the drain.
The gentleman said he is not a hunter, but does enjoy watching a good dog work, and he has no objection with hunters walking across his land to check the drain for ducks. Walking is the key word here.
He doesn’t post his land, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has to resort to that at some point. It sounds like he’s getting fed up with having to go out and tell people who should clearly know better, that driving across his hay field is not allowed.
In his email, he said the hunters he is having problems with are not the younger generation but guys in their 50s and 60s. Every hunter should know driving across private land, especially through crops, without permission from the land owner is just not done. But the older hunters definitely should know right from wrong.
The age thing sort of surprised me, but then I started thinking about an encounter I had with a group of immature mature hunters on the opening day of pheasant season last year.
Some family and friends and I got to the field we wanted to hunt well before daylight. We parked our trucks next to the field and stood around, waiting for daylight and the shooting hours to arrive.
Now, on opening day in the Yakima Valley, there are some big “feel free to hunt” fields you just know will have more than one group of hunters working them. So you just make sure you are safe, and don’t get in each other’s way.
But on this particular day, as we stood waiting for the time to start hunting, two rigs full of hunters pulled up and parked right next to us.
When one of my friends walked over and asked what was up, the driver of one of the rigs got very belligerent, very quickly.
“We’re going to hunt this field,” he said.
My friend pointed out we were here first and there was no room for more hunters, but the guy driving the rig said he had been hunting this field for 20 years on opening day and no one was going to stop him from hunting it today.
So-called “Seattle hunters” have a bad name with local hunters, but this guy wasn’t from Seattle. He was an older Yakima-area guy and he was a total jerk. I won’t even call him a hunter because anyone with any scruples at all, or with the tiniest slice of sportsmanship in him, would have just said, “We should have gotten here earlier, it’s all yours, boys,” and gone to find another field.
Nope, this pinhead and his buddies bailed out of their trucks and headed into the field. We tried to hunt around the edge of the field, because, we were there first after all, but the day was spoiled. Getting into a shouting match with some fathead idiot will do that.
In fact, it tainted our opening-day experience so badly that this year we drove to Eastern Montana and hunted birds so we wouldn’t have to put up with another overcrowded Yakima Valley opening day again.
It is guys like that slob, and the guys who are just too lazy to get out of their rig and walk across an alfalfa field to check out a drain, who give all hunters a bad name.
With everything going on in today’s world, responsible gun ownership and being a good hunter is more important than ever. And respecting private property sits right at the top of that list.
As it is with just about everything, it is a very few — like the horse’s ass who wouldn’t find another spot to hunt, or the dummies driving across the landowner’s field — that are giving all hunters a bad name.
Most hunters are good, common-sense, law-abiding sportsmen and women. Unfortunately, those of us who do follow the rules are going to have to try even harder to help overcome the few slobs that make us all look bad.
To the landowner who wrote me the email, I hope this helps. But, frankly, I’m not holding out a whole lot of hope. My guess is the ones who are giving you problems are too stupid — or too lazy — to read.
http://www.yakimaherald.com/news/yhr/tuesday/2688980-8/phillips-column-show-some-respect-when-youre-hunting 
