Hunting property in this state can be hard to come by. I am aware of that. 94% of the land is privately owned. I have put posted signs on the land that Dad and I usually hunt on to informed trespassers that the land is actively being managed, watched and hunted on. I also have a tendency of posting trail camera photos of trespassers on my Facebook and IG pages. I have no problem making these people internet famous. In almost every situation that I have encountered, simple communication would have taken care of any property line confusion or permission being (or not being) granted. The number of hunters is declining every year. We need to get creative in how we encourage more people to join our ranks. But, sometimes things happen that make me question.

I recently bought some land. The landowner showed me the deer stands that he had been hunting from. Two were your normal, metal stands that are secured to large trees. The third is a box blind complete with windows and a door.

I did not hunt the land this past fall but knew there were a lot of deer on the property. The land was also not posted beyond the yellow signs that run along the edge of the main road. I did hear gun shots a few times but there are other public hunting areas nearby and the shots didn’t sound too close.

A few weeks ago, we found a new tree stand just off the main walking trail. Muzzleloading season had just ended. There was no name or identification on the stand letting me know who it belonged to. I left it for two weeks, waiting until after the holidays in case the person came back to take it down.

I posted a photo of the stand on my Facebook page, half hoping the person would see it and take it down. I asked the people of the interwebs that they thought I should do with it. Two people offered to buy it from me. Everyone said I needed to take it. One person commented that if they were using it to hunt with a kid, they were teaching them how to hunt without landowner permission and break the law from an early age.

The Maine law states that for treestands on private property:

You must obtain verbal or written permission of the landowner (or representative) to erect or use a portable or permanent ladder or observation stand.

That didn’t happen. And so, the stand came down. The very bottom section of the ladder is frozen into the ground but everything else is down and out of the woods. When the ground thaws a bit, I will grab the last piece. As a result of all of this, I have 50 posted signs that I will be putting up now. No hunting. No trespassing.

There is public land available if the owner of the stand wanted to hunt nearby. If they came knocking on my door asking about the stand, I would probably give it back to them, assuming they could tell me where I had found it. I don’t want to prevent people from hunting and filling their freezer. I just wish someone had asked before putting a stand up on property that they did not have permission to do so on.

What would you do? Take down the stand and keep it? Or give it back if the owner comes asking about it? Allow them to continue hunting? Let me know or let me know if this has happened to you and how you handled it.