True Sportsmen

  Being a Forester I am quite blessed to be able to own quite a few properties. Today I recieved a Christmas card from a hunter thanking me for letting him hunt and informing me of how much he enjoyed it. Sometimes I consider posting and then I recieve a thanks like that, and he even offered to help me "be of any help". I know many others are thankful but in this fast paced world this fella took some of his precious time and expresed it.
  I never saw him this year. However through the grapevine I heard he took a great buck with a bow not on my property, and spent the first day and both saturdays of buck with a youngster. The youngster took a doe first day and wounded a buck ( that was a shame-but it happens). They saw three bucks,and I heard one was a real nice one. His brother took a young fellow the same days and he took a big doe first saturday. They were both hunting different properties that I own. If I ever do post properties its fellas like these that will be told the posters don't apply to them!

sounds like a great guy. its good to hear stories like that. people used to be raised like that , to show appreciation. nice to see theres still some parents out there like that to pass it on to their children.

Very nice of the gentleman, he is to be commended for writing you, and you for allowing others to use your land . Thank you for sharing. If all would act in this manner with good pr. there definitely would be less posted land.

I always thank my neigboring landowners every year for letting me hunt there land and i always share the harvest and know what to get them everytime when i'm at the butcher shop.
 
Ronnie

  I sort of follow this site concerning the closing of access to Steelhead fishing ,and I'm not in the least surprised. Although I enjoy other fishing more than Steelhead fishing ,I still go when I get roped in by family. Most times I come out with well over my limit stuffed in my landing net. Not Steelhead but litter, fishing tackle and food wrappers, pop and beer cans, and all kinds of garbage. As a land owner I couldn't take much of that. What gets to me is not so much the amount of slobs so much as the lack of effort by the others on the streams to keep it all cleaned up. If only 10% of the fishermen are doing the littering. Why can't the conciencious 90% keep the streams cleaned up. Then perhaps the 10% would get the message. I'm sometimes nervous when I am carrying out a net full of beer cans to the Elk Access area. We have to start somewhere and the way it is we look like a bunch of slobs.
 Sorry I am fowling this thread with this thought, it just has been on my mind lately.
 I enjoyed reading the replies you have all made. And as for me I grew up and spent the first ~20 years of my life hunting other peoples property and public land. It is sad how the posting of land in Pa. is progressing. That and the leasing of land has changed the character of hunting in Pa more than Mr Alt has in my opinion. This year alone I have been aproached three times by individuals wanting to lease different tracts of land. They have been welcomed to hunt but I guess they don't want to share. I have booted a few idiots off my properties,
and perhaps it is only their inability to distance themselves from the idiots that leads other landowners  to post and others to  want to lease.
 Recieving a bottle of Brandy from an apriciative sportsman would certainly take me to a new high , har har!

  I haven't fished for Steelhead since last year, springtime. If it is cleaner what a great thing. Litter is something I will never miss.

Hey Treesparrow, I was fishing in Erie the first week of deer. The day before I had been scouting some streams. I stopped at the Benidicton stream(where the nuns live). You have to park on Rt. 5 and walk in. The parking area was TRASHED. I mean really bad(beer cans, candy wrappers) everywhere. I filled the only bag I had with trash. The next day early in the morning I fished 20 mile. I ran into Roy Mercer(great guy) and told him about it. I also called Andy(presqueisleangler) and let him know. By the time I was done fishing for the day(about 4 hours) I stopped by to pick up more trash. It was completely clean!! Now I don't know who cleaned the area, but they were truly a sportsman!

RIZ, Don't pat me on the back to much,as property taxes are getting harder and harder to come up with each year. At some point leasing maybe the only way I can continue to keep the land and stay out of the poorhouse.
To all that replied regarding the litter. I know that I am not the only one who cleans up litter. In fact my Brothers Sister and I have a property on the Clarion River that a logging crew left an enormous amount of trash. Some people from camps next to the property cleaned it all up. It is open to hunting and to fishing however I had to put gates on the access roads because someone changed there oil right in the middle of our grassy turnaround, so to this day we have? qts of oil dumped beside our spring. Then one weekend a group helped themselves to our fiepit picnic area. We recieved ~ 4 cases of broken beer bottles all over. Also a smached TV set at the edge of the river, and beleave me a picture tube makes a lot of "SHARP" slivers up to 7-8 inches long. Someone stole my diging bar, my brothers firepit log turner, our firewood many times, our fire pit grates many times. Now I don't beleave that they target us in particular. They are canoeing down the river and looking for places to picnic etc. I could go on and list horror stories on all the properties I am associated with. Those I own and ones I help others manage.
  Its the guys that do respect other peoples property that keeps my property open to others,and me driving a 91 Toyota Pickup with 255 thousand on it. It makes me incredulous sometimes that I having put 160 thousand of those miles on the Truck have driven that truck the equivalent of 6 times around the Earth. When you realize that ,is when you realize we sure do have the ability to polute our world.