Agents Protect Public’S Rights

Few things irritate hunters and fishers more than the posting of public land with “No Trespassing” signs by property owners who want to use the land for their own purposes.

Unfortunately for sportsmen, the practice is not a rarity in the Inland Northwest. And in most cases, the hunters and fishers, not knowing for sure that the land doesn’t belong to the people who post it, meekly leave when ordered to do so.

Hunters, fishers, hikers and even bird-watchers can cheer a little when an owner of property adjacent to public land finally is forced to remove illegally posted signs on the public land.

Thanks to a couple of the state’s wildlife agents, a property owner and his sons will be tried later this year on several charges, including unlawful posting, hunting without licenses or waterfowl stamps, unplugged shotguns, possessing loaded shotguns in a vehicle and hunter harassment.

The agents, Dan Rahn of Ephrata and Sgt. Chris Anderson of Leavenworth, risked their lives to stop a Moses Lake area property owner and his sons from harassing and threatening hunters who tried to hunt Bureau of Reclamation land along Crab Creek.

The agents describe what happened to them in the spring issue of The Informant, a publication of the Washington Game Warden Association.

They told the story in the matter-of-fact way law enforcement officers use, omitting their feelings when members of the landowner’s family “held their loaded shotguns in a threatening and intimidating manner” just before they identified themselves as wildlife agents.

The agents said the patriarch of the family owns a big piece of property near Crab Creek. A little more than a year ago, he negotiated a grazing lease with the Bureau of Reclamation, which has clear title to land on both sides of the creek. The lease specifies that the public land must remain open to the public for hunting and fishing.

The property owner, determined to have a private hunting preserve along the creek for himself, sons and friends, then started posting the public land with “No Trespassing” signs and harassing and intimidating hunters who knew that the land was owned by the bureau.

The offended hunters, some of them neighbors of the property owner, complained to the Fish and Wildlife Department, agents Anderson and Rahn say. Not only had the property owner illegally posted the public land and ordered hunters off the land, the hunters alleged, family members and friends had been illegally hunting after hours and during the time when the pheasant season was closed.

Rahn said he reviewed the grazing lease with Bureau of Reclamation officials and verified that the agency had clear title to the land adjacent to Crab Creek. The bureau then sent a certified delivery letter to the landowner advising him that he was not authorized to keep hunters from the property and that he must remove the “No Trespassing” signs.

Hunters continued to complain that they were ordered off the land and that the property owner hadn’t removed the signs.

Anderson and Rahn, while walking along Crab Creek, said they discovered that the property owner had illegally used heavy equipment to knock down the creek bank so as to flood nearby public land for waterfowl hunting. They reported the violation to bureau officials. Later, while the officials were inspecting the area, they were confronted by members of the property owner’s family and ordered off the public’s land.

Anderson and Rahn, pretending to be hunters, later entered the property while Sgt. Doug Ward and agent Jerry Thomas remained hidden. Anderson and Rahn said they were soon spotted by the sons of the property owner. One son yelled that they were on private property and ordered them to leave. The agents said they knew they were on public land, wouldn’t leave and planned to continue to hunt.

The son, Rahn said, yelled back, “We’ll see about that.” The son drove his pickup to a spot where a man and two teenagers were hunting. All jumped into the pickup and the son drove back to where the agents were standing.

Anderson, after the hunters held their shotguns in a threatening manner, signaled to Ward and Thomas, who quickly appeared to back up the undercover officers.

“We identified ourselves as police officers and opened our cover coats so our uniform shirts were visible,” Anderson and Rahn said. The agents ordered the family members and friends to lay down their shotguns. The confrontation was over.

What happened that day wasn’t just another day in the lives of two wildlife agents. It was a special day, a day when the agents, their lives at stake, stopped one property owner from excluding the public from public land.

It was a small victory in a continuing problem.

The agents hope that the Bureau of Reclamation will cancel its grazing lease with the property owner.

And hunters and fishermen will hope that other owners of property adjacent to public land will take note of what the agents did.