Camping, fishing, hunting, trespassing!

Life is getting back to normal, whatever normal is anymore! And I am way behind responding to comments and checking up on my blog buddies. So this morning as I sit, looking around, trying to decide what to do first, I decided to respond to the camping post. I promised I would, and I don't want you to think of me as a total loser for not keeping my promise. It started out with this post from Reality Jayne. Imagine my surprise when I read that My Shug was ruining RJ's camping dreams! To really get the whole story you should read the comments from the above two posts, as well as, the posts.

Anyway, I started thinking about how cute it would be to have "spam-pers", as Debbie M called them (in the comment section of Rj's post), on the property. I was envisioning retro campers with banners and little gardens and such. I even 'drew up' a plan....the big squares are the actual lot size and the small squares are the spam-per. That's my area, right there in the left hand corner!

And I figured there would be room for three more campers...then I had a little area for a tent for Hookin It with Mr Lick Lick or Cake Chick~~(you really gotta read the comments) That little house thing in the bottom-right corner is the outhouse! We have no electricity back there or running water. Very primitive. And it's surrounded by woods.

But my Shug said "NO"! So I told RJ with a sad face. But I explained the long version to her. And I found out her assistant said if he had land he wouldn't let people camp on it either!

My Shug's reasoning...The Short and Long Version follow...

The Short Version - and, WARNING, some people may not like this - he deer hunts and if there are people back there all the time, human scent and noise will scare all the deer away. Plus "we wanted it to be a nature preserve....remember?"

The Long Version - And this is long so I'll just put it in a different color...and you can skip it if you want to. Truthfully, it's something that I've just wanted to explain for quite a while, and I figured this is the perfect opportunity. You see, I've had to tell very dear friends, special people to me, "no" and it's hard for me. So I'd like to explain.

When we first bought the land, we let people mushroom hunt, fish, and walk the woods. We felt blessed to have it, and wanted to share that blessing. We still feel blessed. We'd say "sure, go on out there, enjoy it!"

We never even had gates up until two years ago, when someone dumped an entire truck load of roofing materials (trash) in our driveway, including roofing nails. They did this at night, of course, in the dark. We weren't surprised that they never came back to get it!

The second year we had the property, we came home from an April vacation and people told my Shug they went mushroom hunting....

One said, "I took my buddy and went mushroom hunting...." My Shug gave HIM permission to hunt, not his buddy. And he was supposed to let us know FIRST that he'd be in the woods. But he said he didn't see us to tell us he was going hunting.

The second person said, "I went mushroom hunting the other day with my friend. I didn't think you'd care since you gave me permission to fish." Really?

The third person was my brother-in-law and his daughter. They called and asked first. He always does. You see, we have 15 immediate family members and all but a couple of them enjoy the outdoors and our property in one way or another.

Then, one day when four of our family members were all standing in the driveway talking, wondering whose motorcycle was parked along our woods, an acquaintance came walking out of our woods with a bag of mushrooms! He admitted that he's been told to stay off of other peoples property but he loves to mushroom hunt and feels the risk of getting caught is worth it. I'm serious.

The next month of that year....my Shug noticed some fishing poles along the bank of our land. The lines were in the water, with bait on the end of the lines, but no people on the other end of the pole. My Shug wondered...'WTH?' Within the hour a neighbor came over, said he didn't think we'd care if he and his buddy went fishing. His idea of fishing is putting a pole in the water and coming back to check on it now and then....not the same as our idea of fishing where you sit at the other end of the pole and reel the fish in when they are caught. And yes we do mind, and the next time ask first. Oh yeah, and throughout the conversation he mentioned "the last time he fished here" and right before that he said it was the first time he'd ever fished on our property. Hello Mr. Neighbor...do you hear yourself lieing?

The final straw for me was when I was floating on a raft while the boys I watch played in the water and there were people fishing on our bank and I didn't know them. Awwwkward! Apparently, they were a sister, and a wife of a guy that my Shug said could fish. The guy wasn't with them.

The final straw for my Shug was when we got a phone call at 9:30 PM, and we were already in bed. Someone we didn't know, looked up who owned the property, was asking to hunt deer. My Shug does not like to be woke up when he is asleep. He gets up at 5:00 AM for work.

And just a couple of months ago, my Shug asked two people to leave our property who were turtle hunting. They got belligerent, my Shug called the police, the police said they could hunt the creek, stay off of our property, and they are not allowed to park their car on the road while hunting. They left. One of them did claim he was going to school for the DNR and he has the right to turtle hunt, he knows the rules.

I won't even go into the stories about the times we've called police because of the meth we've found on our property! S C A R Y! We didn't even know what it was at first. We'd been throwing the bottles in the trash!!!

These are all true stories. So, you see peeps, we wanted to share..... but people take advantage, sometimes unknowingly. And some people have no common courtesy or common sense. And where do you draw the line? It's hard to do. It's not fair to say yes to one and no to another. So we just limit it to immediate family. Because before you know it, you have people on your property who claim they have permission when you have no idea who they are. Might be the serial killer that was walking around our campsite back in June when my niece and I were camping!

I explained this long version to RJ. She understood. I hope you do too.

"Massholes" Cake Chick? Too funny.

Cindy Bee