Neighbors Dread Start Of Hunting Season Hayden Pastures Bring Hunters - And ‘No Trespassing’ Signs

Last October, Karen Roth remembers waking up to the sound of a gun blast in her back yard.

She crawled out of bed at 5 a.m. and saw a hunter through the fog crossing her horse pasture with a rifle.

The next day, her neighbors at the Dobson-Rossi ranch had a similar run-in with a hunter. The following morning, a horse on the ranch was found shot dead.

A week ago, in anticipation of deer season, the Dobsons erected a large sign on the corner of their cow pasture.

“Don’t even think about it!!” reads the sign. “NO HUNTING. We’re still pissed from last year!!!”

The sign is a message from “The neighborhood.”

“Deer season starts next week and everybody just dreads it,” said Sandy Rogers, another horse owner.

She sees out-of-state pickups driving through the area, and worries they’ll stray off state and federal land and into the pastures.

Adjacent to the Dobson ranch is a ranch that raises Fjord horses. This fall the owner posted “no hunting” and “no trespassing” signs around the perimeter of his property.

Whether it’s hunting season or not, the neighbors have found evidence of hunting on their property. Once, Rogers found a fawn dying in her fields from a bullet.

“The dog yesterday drug in a big, butchered-out carcass,” Roth said. “We haven’t been able to figure out where he’s getting them.”

Overall, however, Roth said this fall has been quieter than last. She doesn’t know whether the sign has helped, “but it can’t hurt.”

“We’re rural, but you still have too many moving targets,” she said. Some of those moving targets, the neighbors fear, may end up being their children.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department and state Department of Fish and Game have been unable to find the suspects in the most egregious crimes.

When the trespasser was shooting on her property last year, Roth couldn’t get the license plate number before the culprit drove away.

Some neighbors, who asked not to be named, said they feel like they’re being held hostage by some renegade hunter who may be a neighbor.

Jim Hayden, the regional wildlife manager for Fish and Game, said such conflicts are becoming common as more and more people move into outlying areas that have traditionally been hunted.

“The assumption in Idaho is if a forested area isn’t posted against hunting, there’s no penalty for trespassing,” he said.

That doesn’t apply to clearly agricultural areas, such as Roth’s neighborhood, which has only a handful of newer homes. Although common sense says they don’t need “no hunting” signs, the residents feel forced to put them up.

Signs will stop the more conscientious hunters from hunting on private property, but when it comes to poachers and other unscrupulous types, “it’s like putting a sign up in a bank, ‘No bank-robbing’,” Hayden said.

To stop them, the neighbors know they have to catch them in the act.

“I’ve noticed everyone’s keeping a more watchful eye,” Roth said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo