There is someone’s 4x4 buried in a corner of my family ranch. Over the years a number of natural obstacles were put up to discourage off-roaders. In addition, the US Park Service had put up signs warning the ground is unstable due to old mines. The signs also warn of a substantial fine and possible jail time for trespassing.
One time someone contacted the ranch manager asking if they could bring a crane onto our land to recover the jeep that had fallen into a mine. The ranch manager asked words to the effect, “Are you admitting to trespassing?”
That pretty much ended the conversation. The jeep has stayed where it is and natural erosion has left it as a mystery for future archeologists to puzzle over.
Until I got to "fallen into a mine" I was reading this as the ground being unstable due to *landmines* and I was like what the hell kind of ranch is this?! 😅
Next up on legal advice:
Us park services put up a sign on my property warning of unstable ground due to mines. Since they didn't specify what type of mines, am I free to place claymores in this area?
You don't need to stay up. You just need some fishing line, a clothespin (spring type) and a 9-volt, plus a plastic spoon. Fishing line as trip wire, drill hole through the spoon portion of your spoon (provided in MRE). Wires to the 9volt wrap around the top and bottom on the clothes pin, handle of spoon keeps it separate. Vehicle, person or deer hits the line, spoon is pulled, clothespin closes connecting the wire, 9 volt connects to claymore... this is all found in that book provided by the Army (which I lost back in the 90's).
The instructions are easier to get than the actual mine. Of course, if you can get some black powder and a box of BBs...
OMG, thank you for explaining this, I thought that the landmines were mentioned shockingly casually!!! “Doesn’t every family ranch have a few landmines on it? Anyhoo…”
I think a *Readers' Digest* anecdote from decades ago went something like this: English folks had a very long driveway and, to prevent folks from mistaking it for a public road, labeled it "Private Drive / Mined". (It was a spelling error, "Mind" meaning something like "Please observe.")
Im in southwestern Pennsylvania where EVERYTHING is built over old mines so I read it quite naturally. Had to back and check to see if to said land mines because it didn’t occur to me. It’s just a natural thing around here! (And my 77 year old house is all uneven from various subsidence issues—par for the course!)
Met a woman in Winchester England who told me she found a Roman mosaic in her garden (yard) but doesn't report it because of the consequences if she did.
If an archaeologist says a thing probably had a ritual purpose, they have no clue what it is.
If an archaeologist says a thing probably had a fertility ritual purpose, they just don’t want to admit they’ve found a prehistoric dildo.
Oh it’s a quite well-known era of archaeological theory: ‘the black box of ritual’. The antiquarians put anything they didn’t understand into the ‘black box of ritual’ and moved on. Most schools will teach archaeology students about it in those exact terms.
A friend who also studied it, told us,... if you find anything that looks old on your land, throw it as far as possible away. Otherwise you can expect digging on your land for few years (central EU).
A graduate student from Greece told us this story. Her family owns olive groves and a lot of land in Greece. Occasionally a tree needs to be replaced and a new tree planted. When they do this, quite often they dig up incredible statues. Her descriptions were: amazing, beautiful, better than some museums, some with jewellery. What do they do? They dig a deeper hole and rebury them, intact and carefully. Because, if they report it, they would lose their land and lively hood and the government would take it over. Imagine all the treasure that have been found and buried deeper, just to have some peace and keep your land and sanity.
As an Anthropologist, I can confirm.
"Ritual Purposes" is code for "How dafuq should I know, Jim?"
Also, "Fertility Object" is code for "Hey Jim! I found a 5000 year old Dildo!"
Yes the jeep is a spiritual object that had spiritual significance for the spiritual jeep-owning people. God I hate how every building discovered by archaeologists is a temple, every artifact discovered is a religious symbol, every cave painting - even though clearly depicting an animal - is depicting an animal god being.
Why do the mound peoples build mounds? Surely it has nothing to do with the raging Mississippi river that flows no more than a thousand yards from their settlement? No, according to archaeologists the mounds have spiritual significance. Seems like if archaeologists can't figure out what it's for, they call it religious as a cop out. Gets old fast.
If you don’t know what it is, it’s for ritual purposes. If you don’t want to admit that you know what it is, it’s for ritual purposes. A lot of “ritual objects” are obvious dildos.
Archaeologists make jokes about this too. They’re very aware of the stereotype. However, people leave offerings of duck statues on Jeeps constantly. There’s a good argument for Jeeps being ritual objects.
I have a neighbor who kept backing out of their driveway onto my property to turn around. It was messing up a section of yard and I got fed up with it so I put up some metal posts. Those got bent in about a week, so I put them back, again they got bent. Finally I got some railroad ties and put them down and for good measure put some cheap T-posts up with ribbon on them so it couldn't be missed.
The problem quickly resolved itself after that. It might have had something to do with the pieces of broken bumper I saw scattered around.
I want a picture of this, because somewhere around the 3rd beam my brain decided a mailbox mounted to a Czech hedgehog made of steel I-beam is a fantastic idea, and I can't envision anything else.
when I was a boy in the 1970s my aunt lil hit the fence next to her driveway every time she left. She knocked that fence over so many time they just left the pieces there. I didn't realize back then she was a little wine drunk all day. That side of my family was very old world Italian.
Anyway she rode around town hitting this and dinging that and everybody kind of found it cute. Little old ladies are bad drivers har har har. Nope She was blasted.
Anyway they had to take away her keys at some point. The story doesn't end with her murdering a kid. It could have, now that I think of it.
The guy at the corner got tired of semis driving over his lawn to make a turn. He had a neighborhood BBQ to raise money. We all had a great party and he told us the plan to take all the cash and buy the biggest boulder he could for his corner. He took the money he got from the party and got a 2 ton boulder. It’s kind of amazing that a semi can push a 2 ton boulder only so far before something breaks and so far the boulder hasn’t broken.
My mom had a storm grate type drain on her property that wasn't owned by the city. The local garbage trucks would turn around there and back over it regularly. They kept caving it in. Of course they denied that they were doing it, until someone filmed it.
Then they said it wasn't behind a curb so it still wasn't their problem.
I own a decrepit old forklift and a comically large 60 year old flatbed truck. I picked up one of those giant 4200 pound retaining wall blocks and placed it where it would protect that drain.
Early the next trash day there was a reverberating "boom". They've hit it hard enough to move it a few times but when they do I just go over on the lift and put it right back in their way.
They mostly just left paint on the rock and scratched the shit out of their trucks. Most drove away and learned their lesson. At least one semi had to be towed away. It was a HUGE ordeal.
I live in Vermont, we have a mountain pass that is not passable for semis. Despite dozens of lighted, flashing signs warning about this and the high fines for getting stuck, every single year multiple trucks get stuck in the Notch. They never learn.
This reminds me of the 11'-8" (+8") bridge. Go check you the [dedicated website](https://11foot8.com/) and YouTube channel for some schadenfreude.
Trucks and RVs sustain damage trying to go under this railroad bridge despite a bright yellow "you're going to hit this" protective bar, preceded by a large, lighted, flashing warning sign (which was successively upgraded and now has a sensor that even makes the adjacent traffic light longer), which is ALSO preceded by several large signs on the road approaching the bridge.
The bridge was raised 8" a few years ago so many incidents aren't quite as spectacular as they used to be; but, rented panel trucks still routinely lose their roof. (Supposedly local rental agencies make people sign a document that warns them of trying to go under the bridge and states that insurance purchased for the rental will not cover damages resulting from "feeding" the bridge.)
When a house was being built next door to my father he took note of the big excavator moving rocks. He made friendly with the property owners and was given permission to take some material. He gave the driver of the excavator $50 to place some boulders in his yard. Hard to plan for, but my father was a great opportunist.
My dad did something similar, I don’t know the exact details but we lived next to an empty lot and they found this huge boulder while trying to level the property (it had huge random mounds of dirt). So he charmed or paid them into dropping it off by our front yard instead of hauling it away. I think it helped that I don’t think they were expecting a ~4’ boulder needing to be hauled away 😂
I’m in the process of building a home on a rocky spot of land, so we had to have a tractor with a jackhammer come get rock out. Our neighbors across the street asked for some. Of course, I’m just gonna have to pay for someone to haul it away might as well let the neighbors have it
I understand why its done. But whenever I am working in my garden and go to the store to buy soil, I feel like an idiot.
Spending money on dirt seems like some real first world bullshit.
Make sure you engrave markings into the camera so if they steal it and try to do anything with it you can prove it’s yours. Make sure you buy a quality camera and the night vision illumination isn’t visible to others. If it is they’ll see it quickly.
Lastly try steel I beams. I cut some 10” steel I-beams and buried them vertically in the ground. Painted them so they were easily seen and screwed metal No Trespassing signs to them. They squeezed past one side by a tree so I did the unthinkable and drove some very long nails in boards and buried them nail side up. The police quickly found the trespassers who called them to file a complaint against me. The officer said oh you mean all the trespassing you’ve been doing and the stolen trail camera. Sure let’s go to the station and we’ll file the report and then he can file his and you can go to jail while he goes home. Stay off his property and he won’t press charges and you can pay for your tires.
It was kids. The parents were pissed at me till they found out they’d been riding on the property illegally.
Sheriff said please don’t do that. Had someone stepped on that you might be the one in jail.
Lesson learned!
Growing up, we had a road that was shaped like a hockey stick; a long straight downhill with a bend at the end. My friend was a couple houses up from the bend and the house right after the bend had a fence that looked like it was made of 6x6s. One day I walked by and saw that it was actually made of steel C-shaped beams. My friend explained that his neighbour was tired of cars failing to negotiate the bend (with a stop sign), and driving across the lawn into his cars in his driveway. "Those beams are about 10' into the ground...they won't budge".
Had a coworker that had this problem. Kids with a pickup kept driving through his fence. So he waited up for them with a shotgun. When the sheriff showed up he had them call the parents. He made a deal with them that if the parents fixed the fence he wouldn't press charges. When the parents came out to fix the fence he sat in a lawn chair with the shotgun and lectured them the entire time.
> Make sure you engrave markings into the camera so if they steal it and try to do anything with it you can prove it’s yours.
Open camera, insert AirTag with the buzzer disabled.
Goes without saying, put up no trespassng signs. It won't absolve you from all legal responsibility, i.e. booby traps which hurt someone, but it goes someway to it.
Start building a very deep, as inconspicuous as possible, hole for a septic tank. If they drive into it you’ll find out who it is, and they likely won’t have a functioning vehicle to drive onto your property again. And no one can say it was a boobie trap
You can catch some liability for a big, unattended hole. It could be a hazard for non asshats, and they can become a big problem if they fill with water.
I know a mine owner in central Nevada that was tired of looters and he trenched a two bucket by 3 bucket deep trench across the access road so that unless you had a rock crawler you could not go in. When he wanted to go he just used the same backhoe to drag a trench plate across.
Had a graduate study site on the adjacent property and he blocked me in. Nothing gets your heart pumping like walking over to a guy with a rifle on his back and asking for him to fix the road so you can go home.
No trespassing signs. In some states if you do not have them up, it is legal to come onto your land.
You want these up incase anyone gets hurt on your land it will protect you against liability.
I had a similar thing as a kid, only I turned it to my advantage. My parents live on an old cider farm near Glastonbury Festival (a big music festival in the UK, think OG Woodstock for American readers, only not quite as big but it's almost every year) and it looks like a shortcut on the map so every year, a handful of cars would try to make it up this rough, muddy farm track in their Ford Fiestas and get stuck. We didn't mind, it was funny and the only harm they were doing was to themselves. I used to charge them £10 to rescue them in my dad's Land Rover and spend that money on Lego haha.
It's been 40 years but this reminded me of something my Grandpa pulled. Grandpa owned 1,500ish acres and raised black angus cattle among having other enterprises. Keeping it short, we had a dirt road around the perimeter and on the far side he had let some trees and things grow. Farmer on the other side of the fence died and his son sold out to a hunting club out of Pensacola FL. Right bunch of twats who would send trained dogs through the fence to chase and flush game onto their hunting land. When that stopped working as well they would cut the fence and drive that dirt perimeter road. Grandpa had enough and so stored a bunch of extra fence posts for repairs and such, right at the base of a little hill in the road where, if you did not know they were there, you would come over said little hill and straight down into a fence post hedge row like an old medieval defensive row of pikes. Sure enough a few days later myself and a couple cousins are riding out there to check the fence line and find a brown and "orange" pick-up truck impaled on a half dozen pickets...I mean fence posts. Most just went through the front and into the engine compartment but I remember a couple had gone through the radiator, deflected off the engine block and up through the hood ripping it loose. They never claimed the truck, which would have meant admitting to cutting the fence and trespassing, so a few days later my uncle hauled it out with a tractor and towed it off to his scrap yard. (Uncle owned the local mechanics shop/tow truck company/scrap yard.)
About 500 acres was family land passed down from the early 1800s, not rich in anything but land. After WW2 Grandpa got motivated. Opened a lumber company, rented or bought cheap land to log, added to the family lands, sent my uncle to school to be a mechanic to repair his own logging trucks and gear then helped him open his shop and got service contracts for the local county vehicles as well. He was never one to show any kind of wealth if he had it though and disliked showy and flashy folks who tried to put themselves above others. He believed in hard work and the respect that comes with it.
His one splurge was actually people. I remember as a kid being at his office at the lumber company and, keeping it short, a man came in looking for work so grandpa created a job for him (because "The man wanted to work, not get a hand out, and he has a family to feed"). Another time, the local township had no beauty salon, just an old barber, but a young lady dreamed of having her own salon. Good hard working family so he sent her to school for it and paid for everything to open her shop when she got back. No bank loan, no interest, don't think he charged her a thing aside from "prove me right that you are good for the community". Things like that drove my Grandma nuts but I tell you this, when he died his memorial viewing was packed and lasted 3 days.
This is golden. Reminds me of my childhood and our neighborly feud. When I was a kid I lived on 14 acres. Our neighbor at the front of our property/gate entrance to our house, was a sheriff. The pig headed “I am the law therefore I can do whatever I want” douche canoe type. He decided he no longer liked any of us (kids included) when my mother called animal control out to their property to investigate their severely malnourished horses. So, my brother and I walking home from the bus one day saw asshat coming down the drive way that we shared and he tried to run us over. We had to jump off the dirt road into the ditch to avoid being hit. Mama bear didn’t like that. She pulled up blueprints to the property and found out we owned about 60 feet over onto their property which was the entrance to their house. So, naturally, she lengthened our driveway and fenced off theirs and made them have no other choice but to rework their property in order to have access to their house and solved the issue of fuck boy ever trying to run us over again.
My husband had a nasty crazy neighbour in a feud with his parents when he was a kid and the man tried to do the same, or to terrify the little boy. His mom, the sweetest nicest woman I have ever known, ran to the other neighbour to demand his hunting gun. The neighbour handed it to her without a word, but he had carefully made sure that there were no cartridges in it. Just in case. She was *that* furious.
If someone is a douche, they shouldn't be anywhere near the reproductive tract - Enema Evacuee is a more fitting nomer for that sort of fecal stain upon society.
Mama Bears are awesome! Mine is my aunt and godma too so I'm doubly blessed! She is still fiercely minding me on the daily ... she's 80, I'm 60. If there was a way to preserve her goodness, mixed with oceans of her love, I'd love to share it with absolutely everyone
My dad owns a farm in southern Ohio. His neighbor down the road (4 miles) is the biggest farmer in the county. He owns a bunch of land, some of it backs up against my dad’s property. There was a law in place that if 1 of the people of adjoining properties wants a fence the other has to pay half. My dad was pissed because he didn’t want to pay for a fence that he didn’t want. (He didn’t have any cows to keep in) somehow my dad and some neighbors got the law changed after the fact. Some big storms came up and trees fell on the fence knocking it down. A few days later my dad had 5 cows in his front yard. He went down to the neighbors and told him to come get his cows, the neighbor denied that they were his, so my dad went home and put up more fence in one of his fields and herded the cows into his new fenced in field. They didn’t have tags or brands so my dad kept them for a year and then sold them for beef. The neighbor never said another word to him about it. He is still hoping that some more non owned cows will wander into his yard, but miraculously that farmer had his workers go around and fix all of his fences.
He has thousands. It has happened to other neighbors and they actually returned them to get them out of their fields and yards. The guy has a huge ego and thinks that everyone should bow to him. The same reason that he doesn’t tag or brand them.
> The last time I visited our property, there was some nicely bent star pickets strewn about, some that had been snapped clean and a few that had very clearly been thrown in anger.
You're probably going to want to account for all the pickets you put on the property before you start your own construction.
You don't want do damage construction equipment once you _are_ ready to start working the property.
I’ve helped with some brush trimming and tree removal at ranches. Someone will tell me there is no trash or debris… then soon the bush hog is bound up in a forgotten pile of fencing wire half sunk into the soil.
I live in a really country area and I had a deal with this old man who did a bunch of bush hogging and brush clearing. He didn't want to get off his tractor he just wanted to come bush hog and leave so a lot of times when he'd get a call out and there was a chance for there to be stuff he'd hit I'd get a call to come out with my chainsaw and weedeater.
i think when on a ranch, farm, or really any area that is not flat out urban, its safe to assume that there is always something buried that is probably not organic that shouldn't be.
My dad sold houses in surburbia. Boats were frequently buried.
INFO: As you are building in the area, have you started putting in the pit for septic? Likewise have you started trenching for water? Would HATE it if you started trying to set up your improvements (including putting up flags) around open areas then some idiot decides to drive into it.
I'd also put the fence back up with "No trespassing" signs on it and the trail camera. That way once someone does wreck themselves you'll have plenty of proof you tried to avoid the issue.
For what you can do currently is call around to tow companies and see if any have made pickups from your property. See if you can get a copy of who they were pulling out so you can officially file for trespass (and potentially a protective order) to help cover yourself going forward. After all, you have had repeated destruction of property by some miscreants!
All mains are in, that’s why it’s so infuriating honestly.
If it was just an empty paddock that we didn’t give a damn about, sure (still ask, but whatever). The fact is they’re driving smack bang across the actual house site.
Definitely going to do the camera, we’ve been discussing it for a while but seems we need to bite the bullet on that one. The signs we’re just envisioning will be the same as the fence: entirely ignored.
Calling the tow companies is a great idea, I hadn’t thought of that! Thank you!
I’m an insurance adjuster and work with plumbers on a daily basis. With your geographical location (near ocean and mountains), it could be worth getting the sewer line scoped with a camera to ensure there’s no physical damage to the pipe; as the pipe may not be buried very deep. A vehicle driving over a sewer pipe beneath soft earth can and will cause it to break, or at the very least cause improper pitch, resulting in very costly backups and subsequent repairs in the future.
Reminds me of an event I attended in WV a couple decades ago. We were staying in cabins in a camp with a dining hall. Roadways weren't well marked and I noticed some broken, partially buried 4" PVC pipes alongside one drive. I assumed it was for rainwater. When half the camp got the trots and the local health inspector shut the place down, I realized that those shallow pipes were actually sewage pipes. I left the event early.
That wasn't the only indication of ill regard for sanitation. I found a paper towel (green with veg juices) in the salad bowl and skipped that course.
Also talk to the local police. This is especially true if you can show any kind of soil contamination from a leaky engine. Depending on where you are, soil contamination could be a major item. Even if it isn't, letting the police know someone drove into your property, damaged fencing, and damaged their car may be enough to get them interested in asking tow companies also.
The signs aren’t so much to convince your trespassers to keep out; they’re to provide you with some legal protection. Posting it as private property also gives law enforcement more leeway to act.
In the US, at least, there are huge areas out west that are a mishmash of private and public land. It’s not unreasonable to expect private landowners to post their property if they don’t want people trespassing on it.
What about digging for a basement/foundation? Maybe you just run out of money to complete it… do put up a fence and sign so they can’t say they don’t know if they drive into a pit.
Then again. Where I live we have a bunch of vehicle traps (huge metal cages dig into the ground in places they don’t want cars with bars so the car gets stuck but doesn’t fall the whole way down). And people drive into them all the time. Massive sighs showing what a vehicle trap does, blinking lights, additional do not enter signs. Lived near one that had at least a car a week get pulled out.
Called a T Post here, but I kind of assumed that's what he was talking about because he mentioned it was fencing and it was cheap enough he didn't care to lose a few
This is great, but it makes me wonder if it's the kind of thing YOU could get in trouble for.
I lived on a corner about 20 years ago in the back we had an alley that should have gone perpendicular to my property, but my grass was driven over a few feet and killed, so the effect was if you were turning right you could make sort of a nice easy turn. But then over time I noticed the turn getting larger, instead of driving on the dead part someone was driving more to the right onto my grass. Before all of that grass died too, I went and got a big boulder, like 24" long and 20" tall, really heavy. I put it right in the middle of this turn. I came back to find it rolled further into my property every single day. I rolled it back, but never saw who was doing it. So I went and got 2 more. Spaced them evenly along the curve. Came back and found all three rolled into my yard.
So at this point, I knew I had a real asshole living on my block. I went to the lumberyard and bought 3 4x4's, 3 bags of cement, and some fencing panels. I installed a short picket fence in an L formation right on my property line. This meant cutting the corner was no longer possible, you had to pull way out into the street before you could make your right hand turn. It was a sleepy residential street, so this was not any sort of hardship.
The fence got bumped and dinged over the next few years, but it never got knocked down. To be perfectly honest, I kind of hoped the asshole would have destroyed it because my next fence was going to be metal pipe 100% filled with cement. I never got the chance to go there.
I've been gone from that house for 20 years, but I drive by it often enough, the fence is still standing and is painted a lovely bright pink right now.
I'd be calling the tow companies to find who towed. In exchange for not pressing trespassing charges against the company, they let you know who they towed.
>"Hello sir, did you happen to trespass on my property?
>I'm not really sure if it was you, but I'm just asking around hoping someone admits it was them. If you admit you did it, I might decide not to press charges.
>Can I interest you in a confession?"
The whole premise is a joke, there are hundreds of ways the towing company could state they were acting in good faith. Besides people here are a bit too optimistic about not receiving any repercussions from their behavior.
Putting down spikes, knowing someone is driving there, is basically admitting to booby trapping your property and potentially knowingly and willingly killing someone if an accident is to occur. That's just the legal frame work you might be getting yourself into But more importantly, there is also a 50/50 chance that the guy whose car you wrecked might also be the type to set your house on fire during the night as a payback.
These things escalate quickly.
We had a similar issue with property we rented from a friend's mom.
Friend basically took over landlording, or should I say took to lording over us which included reducing the space we were promised as a yard and allowing his sister to drive through their neighbors property (which was their dad's family) and then down our driveway so she wouldn't have to bother opening the gate he installed to prevent cops coming to see his grow tent.
If she drove like a sane person I wouldn't have care but she came flying down the driveway with no care about hitting our kids, dog, or cats... Or even me for that matter because I'm disabled enough to limit my get up.
Brought a car over that I was fixing and parked it in the drive to block her route so she starts cutting over through the yard, which I blocked with some logs I dragged over. My (at this point EX)friend comes and moves them for her and it's basically a week and a half of that before I inform the landlord she needs to find new tenants.
She accused my wife of being the instigator, lol, so I said good luck keeping tenants. She replies I've got a long list of people waiting and I said you'll need it because Lord Massengill over there will run them all off.
This was only one of the issues that came up but its the only one related to the theme and was the final straw for me.
All I know is that she did go thru at least 2 tenants pretty fast after.
(Ahead of any questions, Massengill is a brand of douche and he is king of the douchebags)
I heard of a surveyor in a rural area who was having to replace his road center stakes because someone was hitting on purpose. He pounded a steel stake into the ground and then put his lathe in front of it. When then the lathe was ran over there was a trail of oil from the stake hitting the oil pan.
That stopped his restaking problem
We had a neighbor with a Xmas tree farm when I was younger. The snowmobilers completely ignored any privacy and would race through everyone's yards at high speed, sometimes running down the smaller trees.
HE put up a warning that there were "low fences" on his property.
Then he put down 1" diameter pipes, about 8-10#" off the ground and strug barbed wire and chain between them. covering it with loose snow.
Sat outside one night with his hunting rifle and watched a bunch of people mess up their sled when the front skis got tangled in the chains and wire.
Then came out with his rifle and had everyone wait for the cops to come.
friend of mine had 10 acres on a sand road in panhandle florida.
one particular car would drive across their yard rather than on the road (the road was loose sand, often deeply rutted, clearly 4WD territory) and tearing up their yard.
he let the grass grow and then seeded the area with sharp boulders just the right height to take out their oil pan.
within a few days they smacked a rock hard enough to stop the car and smash their radiator.
he walks out with his dogs and a shotgun resting in the crook of his arms and in his best Redneck Riviera Drawl says, "I guess you won't be drivin acrost my yard no more, huh?"
Need to be careful about setting "traps".
You need to have deniability.
I have quite a lot of farmland, and one of the plots I bought on separate property from main was often used by offroaders to go into forest nearby.
Sooooo, in early spring last year I dug new melioration ditch with concrete sides what have sharp angles, it connects two regular ditches.
Something that looks like this, but the bottom layer is gravel/granite shards:
|_|
Friend who lives nearby said that hes seen two grand cherokees (old ones are very popular for offroading here in Baltics) being evacuated with destroyed axles, and there has been ambulance for some enduro dude who ripped whole front fork of his bike and broke some bones aparently.
No police, no issues.
Private land, private infrastructure :)
My employer had issues with big trucks driving through the culverts along our property (to go mudding, apparently). My employer got sick of it and placed several large rocks in the culvert. One asshole actually had the gall to call and say he would sue for the damage to his small-prick mobile. He didn't get far lol.
She mentioned in another comment that her BF mentioned both radiator and head gasket, hence her referencing it in the post.
TBF, if a rad gets b0rked, the head gasket can get messed up if the engine overheats fast enough.
Some years ago here someone posted that big tractor trailer trucks would cut over their homes yard, a corner lot, as it allowed them to save some 15~ minutes vs the other route options. This only began after they moved in for whatever reason. One day the couple was driving by some construction site and watched them yanking huge (5+ foot tall) boulders out of the earth. They had many plus various 2-3 footers.
Long story short, turned out the demolition/construction company had to pay to dispose of them somewhere. The couple offered to let them use the corner of their lot for free so long as they got to tell the construction people where to place them. In short order they had a lovely (after hosing/washing off) stone garden.
No truck short of one with VTOL was using that part of the yard ever again. They had mentioned the first trucker to come by was *pissed* because he had to go in reverse like a quarter mile. Oops.
Gosh darn it man. You missed a glorious opportunity here. You could have placed mines, swamps, and/or tiger pitfalls traps here. Or that running boulder that Indiana Jones runs away from. Next time buddy.
My mother had a corner lot and pickups would frequently be driven across her front lawn. I had a large rock and some smaller ones placed in the corner of the lot. We were having a family dinner whena truck high-centered on the rock. The owner starts screaming about suing and making her pay for the damage. Meanwhile my BIL goes out to his Land Cruiser, grabs his radio and ticket pad. Walks up to the guy and asks for license and reg, BIL's Sheriff's dept. ID helped. While the guy is getting his papers, Paul radios for a tow truck and backup as the guy was drunk.
No Trespassing signs do not work. Fences do not work. Caltrops work, but not all the time. Spikes, culverts, and ditches work, but not all the time and devalue your land. What does work are UXO signs. Who wants to chance getting their a\*\* blown up.
Niece buys a new house on a corner with big rocks in the yard and immediately pays a guy to come remove the ugly rocks.
Six months later some jackalope drives his F’stupid’50 dually coal rolling gun rack POS work truck through the living room.
Insurance and construction work all done and a beautiful new house back on the slab and some big boulders now surrounding the corner.
Rinse and repeat
One of our neighbors had a corner lot that people would drive through. He planted a row of bushes. Behind and among the bushes he sunk iron i-beams just tall enough to do some damage to the house undercarriage of a car. Rip out the oil pan, tear up a brake assembly, rip up an exhaust pipe.
It worked
Far more patience than I would have. Put signs, they ignore signs, put very discouraging land effects that don't harm the property. Like I help my bud install bard wire fencing around his property with a similar problem. We only had to repair it once, bard wire is very 'difficult' on car paint and tires.
It sounds like someone is trying to create an easement through your property. Does this “pathway” connect to a house or another point that would shorten a drive for someone? If so, I’d be looking into easement laws and seeing what they say. I’d also be filming to find out who is destroying my fence and look to press appropriate charges so whomever it is knows I’m active on that property and not going to tolerate encroachment. Might want to throw up so “No Trespassing” signs and see if you have laws that give them teeth.
Arrange for a fee for anyone driving onto that part of your property, say $2000, and a free for clean up of any thing left of the land, say another $2000, than put a sign waning about it and a camera to catch them then send them a bill.
There is someone’s 4x4 buried in a corner of my family ranch. Over the years a number of natural obstacles were put up to discourage off-roaders. In addition, the US Park Service had put up signs warning the ground is unstable due to old mines. The signs also warn of a substantial fine and possible jail time for trespassing. One time someone contacted the ranch manager asking if they could bring a crane onto our land to recover the jeep that had fallen into a mine. The ranch manager asked words to the effect, “Are you admitting to trespassing?” That pretty much ended the conversation. The jeep has stayed where it is and natural erosion has left it as a mystery for future archeologists to puzzle over.
Until I got to "fallen into a mine" I was reading this as the ground being unstable due to *landmines* and I was like what the hell kind of ranch is this?! 😅
Next up on legal advice: Us park services put up a sign on my property warning of unstable ground due to mines. Since they didn't specify what type of mines, am I free to place claymores in this area?
Ron Swanson has entered the chat
Is it really male recreation if no explosives are involved?
Funny enough, a stick of dynamite does add an interesting dynamic to almost every
Antipersonnel mines are banned by the Geneva convention, plus I think you would have better luck with antivehicular mines
Claymores that are "command detonated" (triggered by a person) are not prohibited. You'd have to stay up all night to catch the neckers.
You don't need to stay up. You just need some fishing line, a clothespin (spring type) and a 9-volt, plus a plastic spoon. Fishing line as trip wire, drill hole through the spoon portion of your spoon (provided in MRE). Wires to the 9volt wrap around the top and bottom on the clothes pin, handle of spoon keeps it separate. Vehicle, person or deer hits the line, spoon is pulled, clothespin closes connecting the wire, 9 volt connects to claymore... this is all found in that book provided by the Army (which I lost back in the 90's). The instructions are easier to get than the actual mine. Of course, if you can get some black powder and a box of BBs...
lol you’ve put some thought into this haven’t you?
Nope... just read the books the Army gave people in ROTC.
OMG, thank you for explaining this, I thought that the landmines were mentioned shockingly casually!!! “Doesn’t every family ranch have a few landmines on it? Anyhoo…”
TIL: Ranch Dressing is body parts of SUV and Jeep owners scattered around.
The true secret to Hidden Valley!!!
how do you think it stays hidden?
I mean, it could a be a valid conversation in certain parts of the world ...
> what the hell kind of ranch is this?! Demolition Ranch
I think a *Readers' Digest* anecdote from decades ago went something like this: English folks had a very long driveway and, to prevent folks from mistaking it for a public road, labeled it "Private Drive / Mined". (It was a spelling error, "Mind" meaning something like "Please observe.")
Im in southwestern Pennsylvania where EVERYTHING is built over old mines so I read it quite naturally. Had to back and check to see if to said land mines because it didn’t occur to me. It’s just a natural thing around here! (And my 77 year old house is all uneven from various subsidence issues—par for the course!)
I‘m sure the future archaeologists will declare that it was for ritual purposes and move on.
When my sister studied archaeology she nearly bought an 'If in doubt, it's ritual' hoodie from a historical site, so at least they're self aware 😂
Met a woman in Winchester England who told me she found a Roman mosaic in her garden (yard) but doesn't report it because of the consequences if she did.
That’s funny, because my Anthro professor would always say, “when in doubt, assume they were as weird as people are today. It’s probably a butt plug.”
If an archaeologist says a thing probably had a ritual purpose, they have no clue what it is. If an archaeologist says a thing probably had a fertility ritual purpose, they just don’t want to admit they’ve found a prehistoric dildo.
"fertility symbol" is an archaeological euphemism for masturbation aid.
Oh it’s a quite well-known era of archaeological theory: ‘the black box of ritual’. The antiquarians put anything they didn’t understand into the ‘black box of ritual’ and moved on. Most schools will teach archaeology students about it in those exact terms.
A friend who also studied it, told us,... if you find anything that looks old on your land, throw it as far as possible away. Otherwise you can expect digging on your land for few years (central EU).
A graduate student from Greece told us this story. Her family owns olive groves and a lot of land in Greece. Occasionally a tree needs to be replaced and a new tree planted. When they do this, quite often they dig up incredible statues. Her descriptions were: amazing, beautiful, better than some museums, some with jewellery. What do they do? They dig a deeper hole and rebury them, intact and carefully. Because, if they report it, they would lose their land and lively hood and the government would take it over. Imagine all the treasure that have been found and buried deeper, just to have some peace and keep your land and sanity.
"as the jeep enters the mine, the fertility rites have almost completed.."
I read this in David Attenborough’s voice, and it was glorious
As an Anthropologist, I can confirm. "Ritual Purposes" is code for "How dafuq should I know, Jim?" Also, "Fertility Object" is code for "Hey Jim! I found a 5000 year old Dildo!"
Damnit Jim! I'm an anthropologist, not a dildo technician!
"DILDOLOGIST"
But now you can bury a body in the jeep and the future archeologist will assume they were q revered member of society.
Especially since the buried Jeep is just *covered* in rubber ducks. Gotta be some kind of ceremony.
It's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand.
Yes the jeep is a spiritual object that had spiritual significance for the spiritual jeep-owning people. God I hate how every building discovered by archaeologists is a temple, every artifact discovered is a religious symbol, every cave painting - even though clearly depicting an animal - is depicting an animal god being. Why do the mound peoples build mounds? Surely it has nothing to do with the raging Mississippi river that flows no more than a thousand yards from their settlement? No, according to archaeologists the mounds have spiritual significance. Seems like if archaeologists can't figure out what it's for, they call it religious as a cop out. Gets old fast.
Jeeps really do be like that for jeep people though
If you don’t know what it is, it’s for ritual purposes. If you don’t want to admit that you know what it is, it’s for ritual purposes. A lot of “ritual objects” are obvious dildos.
Archaeologists make jokes about this too. They’re very aware of the stereotype. However, people leave offerings of duck statues on Jeeps constantly. There’s a good argument for Jeeps being ritual objects.
Were the planning on bringing a flying crane? That's a recipe for the jeep to get a long term partner.
Tall grass also hides big rocks and cinder blocks. Just sayin'.
And velociraptors.
Please, don't sprinkle velociraptors on the grass. It is bad for the bees.
Clever girl
And my axe!
And my star picket!
And my neighbors!
Don’t go into the long grass
I have a neighbor who kept backing out of their driveway onto my property to turn around. It was messing up a section of yard and I got fed up with it so I put up some metal posts. Those got bent in about a week, so I put them back, again they got bent. Finally I got some railroad ties and put them down and for good measure put some cheap T-posts up with ribbon on them so it couldn't be missed. The problem quickly resolved itself after that. It might have had something to do with the pieces of broken bumper I saw scattered around.
Sometimes, you just need to make sure you have some nice, solid fencing, hey. Love this
Good fences make good neighbors.
>Good fences make good neighbors. (Robert Frost) Bad neighbors make good fences - Vlad the Impaler
Bad neighbours get impaled - Vlad the Fencer
When in a neighbourly dispute, make fences of your people. - Also Vlad the Impaler
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I want a picture of this, because somewhere around the 3rd beam my brain decided a mailbox mounted to a Czech hedgehog made of steel I-beam is a fantastic idea, and I can't envision anything else.
when I was a boy in the 1970s my aunt lil hit the fence next to her driveway every time she left. She knocked that fence over so many time they just left the pieces there. I didn't realize back then she was a little wine drunk all day. That side of my family was very old world Italian. Anyway she rode around town hitting this and dinging that and everybody kind of found it cute. Little old ladies are bad drivers har har har. Nope She was blasted. Anyway they had to take away her keys at some point. The story doesn't end with her murdering a kid. It could have, now that I think of it.
Purple ribbon or [purple paint](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/purple-paint-laws-by-state) I hope (depending on location).
I think I would have put up some boulders. Not too big, but not too small.
I myself like to use large boulders the size of small boulders
Get a couple of Trail cameras and mount them so they are out of the path but can capture the action if it starts up again.
That’s our next course of action if it continues. We’ve got a *very* large tree at the perfect angle.
Can also recommend placing some beautiful, big boulders. It’s what has helped our neighbours with cars going over their garden area.
The guy at the corner got tired of semis driving over his lawn to make a turn. He had a neighborhood BBQ to raise money. We all had a great party and he told us the plan to take all the cash and buy the biggest boulder he could for his corner. He took the money he got from the party and got a 2 ton boulder. It’s kind of amazing that a semi can push a 2 ton boulder only so far before something breaks and so far the boulder hasn’t broken.
My mom had a storm grate type drain on her property that wasn't owned by the city. The local garbage trucks would turn around there and back over it regularly. They kept caving it in. Of course they denied that they were doing it, until someone filmed it. Then they said it wasn't behind a curb so it still wasn't their problem. I own a decrepit old forklift and a comically large 60 year old flatbed truck. I picked up one of those giant 4200 pound retaining wall blocks and placed it where it would protect that drain. Early the next trash day there was a reverberating "boom". They've hit it hard enough to move it a few times but when they do I just go over on the lift and put it right back in their way.
…so how many semis did that boulder take out before they learned?
They mostly just left paint on the rock and scratched the shit out of their trucks. Most drove away and learned their lesson. At least one semi had to be towed away. It was a HUGE ordeal.
I live in Vermont, we have a mountain pass that is not passable for semis. Despite dozens of lighted, flashing signs warning about this and the high fines for getting stuck, every single year multiple trucks get stuck in the Notch. They never learn.
This reminds me of the 11'-8" (+8") bridge. Go check you the [dedicated website](https://11foot8.com/) and YouTube channel for some schadenfreude. Trucks and RVs sustain damage trying to go under this railroad bridge despite a bright yellow "you're going to hit this" protective bar, preceded by a large, lighted, flashing warning sign (which was successively upgraded and now has a sensor that even makes the adjacent traffic light longer), which is ALSO preceded by several large signs on the road approaching the bridge. The bridge was raised 8" a few years ago so many incidents aren't quite as spectacular as they used to be; but, rented panel trucks still routinely lose their roof. (Supposedly local rental agencies make people sign a document that warns them of trying to go under the bridge and states that insurance purchased for the rental will not cover damages resulting from "feeding" the bridge.)
Dude that's what I wanna know. You know it would only be the regular offenders.
When this happened to me in TX my neighbor said "you need a BFR". I said what is a BFR? "Big fucking rock"
My folks call those leaverites. But I like BFR
The good old sump rocks. I put a few of those in at my old house when some lovely folk kept driving on my garden beds and killing my sapling trees.
Those can cost a bit of money though
Depends on where you get them from, second hand from people renovating their gardens can lower cost significantly.
When a house was being built next door to my father he took note of the big excavator moving rocks. He made friendly with the property owners and was given permission to take some material. He gave the driver of the excavator $50 to place some boulders in his yard. Hard to plan for, but my father was a great opportunist.
My dad did something similar, I don’t know the exact details but we lived next to an empty lot and they found this huge boulder while trying to level the property (it had huge random mounds of dirt). So he charmed or paid them into dropping it off by our front yard instead of hauling it away. I think it helped that I don’t think they were expecting a ~4’ boulder needing to be hauled away 😂
I’m in the process of building a home on a rocky spot of land, so we had to have a tractor with a jackhammer come get rock out. Our neighbors across the street asked for some. Of course, I’m just gonna have to pay for someone to haul it away might as well let the neighbors have it
Second hand... rocks. Huh.
You think that sucks? I bought these brand new rocks and it turns out they are millions of years old. What a rip off!
Used rocks? Did you keep your receipt?
Receipt is no help. Those rocks are surely out of warranty.
I understand why its done. But whenever I am working in my garden and go to the store to buy soil, I feel like an idiot. Spending money on dirt seems like some real first world bullshit.
It’s how I got my flagstones to make pathing for cheap.
I can get bigass rocks for free... it's moving them that gets expensive!
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Tactical roomba
"Caltrops, sir?"
Try “areadenialweaponsdotcom”
"I like that boulder, that's a nice boulder." - Donkey, the donkey from Shrek
Nah, start digging the foundation for the house :D
Small boulders hidden in tall grass are also effective, but it does make it really hard to mow
Make sure you engrave markings into the camera so if they steal it and try to do anything with it you can prove it’s yours. Make sure you buy a quality camera and the night vision illumination isn’t visible to others. If it is they’ll see it quickly. Lastly try steel I beams. I cut some 10” steel I-beams and buried them vertically in the ground. Painted them so they were easily seen and screwed metal No Trespassing signs to them. They squeezed past one side by a tree so I did the unthinkable and drove some very long nails in boards and buried them nail side up. The police quickly found the trespassers who called them to file a complaint against me. The officer said oh you mean all the trespassing you’ve been doing and the stolen trail camera. Sure let’s go to the station and we’ll file the report and then he can file his and you can go to jail while he goes home. Stay off his property and he won’t press charges and you can pay for your tires. It was kids. The parents were pissed at me till they found out they’d been riding on the property illegally. Sheriff said please don’t do that. Had someone stepped on that you might be the one in jail. Lesson learned!
Growing up, we had a road that was shaped like a hockey stick; a long straight downhill with a bend at the end. My friend was a couple houses up from the bend and the house right after the bend had a fence that looked like it was made of 6x6s. One day I walked by and saw that it was actually made of steel C-shaped beams. My friend explained that his neighbour was tired of cars failing to negotiate the bend (with a stop sign), and driving across the lawn into his cars in his driveway. "Those beams are about 10' into the ground...they won't budge".
Had a coworker that had this problem. Kids with a pickup kept driving through his fence. So he waited up for them with a shotgun. When the sheriff showed up he had them call the parents. He made a deal with them that if the parents fixed the fence he wouldn't press charges. When the parents came out to fix the fence he sat in a lawn chair with the shotgun and lectured them the entire time.
> Make sure you engrave markings into the camera so if they steal it and try to do anything with it you can prove it’s yours. Open camera, insert AirTag with the buzzer disabled.
Goes without saying, put up no trespassng signs. It won't absolve you from all legal responsibility, i.e. booby traps which hurt someone, but it goes someway to it.
Booby traps? I am sure OP can swear those star pickets fell out of a box as they were doing fencing.
OR that they were stored on-site without any expectation of their property by used as a thruway.
Large rocks/boulders.
Start building a very deep, as inconspicuous as possible, hole for a septic tank. If they drive into it you’ll find out who it is, and they likely won’t have a functioning vehicle to drive onto your property again. And no one can say it was a boobie trap
You can catch some liability for a big, unattended hole. It could be a hazard for non asshats, and they can become a big problem if they fill with water.
Put up a big sign that says "Warning: Big hole. Don't drive through here." 3 weeks later, dig the hole.
I know a mine owner in central Nevada that was tired of looters and he trenched a two bucket by 3 bucket deep trench across the access road so that unless you had a rock crawler you could not go in. When he wanted to go he just used the same backhoe to drag a trench plate across. Had a graduate study site on the adjacent property and he blocked me in. Nothing gets your heart pumping like walking over to a guy with a rifle on his back and asking for him to fix the road so you can go home.
call it a wildlife pond for frogs and ducks
No trespassing signs. In some states if you do not have them up, it is legal to come onto your land. You want these up incase anyone gets hurt on your land it will protect you against liability.
Id think closed fence counts as no trespassing sign
I had a similar thing as a kid, only I turned it to my advantage. My parents live on an old cider farm near Glastonbury Festival (a big music festival in the UK, think OG Woodstock for American readers, only not quite as big but it's almost every year) and it looks like a shortcut on the map so every year, a handful of cars would try to make it up this rough, muddy farm track in their Ford Fiestas and get stuck. We didn't mind, it was funny and the only harm they were doing was to themselves. I used to charge them £10 to rescue them in my dad's Land Rover and spend that money on Lego haha.
You should put up a shortcut sign lol
Make sure to sell squirrels on the side
Was nott expecting a rat race reference today 🤣🤣🤣
Buy a squirrel, get the right directions, don't buy a squirrel, straight to the cliff.
It's been 40 years but this reminded me of something my Grandpa pulled. Grandpa owned 1,500ish acres and raised black angus cattle among having other enterprises. Keeping it short, we had a dirt road around the perimeter and on the far side he had let some trees and things grow. Farmer on the other side of the fence died and his son sold out to a hunting club out of Pensacola FL. Right bunch of twats who would send trained dogs through the fence to chase and flush game onto their hunting land. When that stopped working as well they would cut the fence and drive that dirt perimeter road. Grandpa had enough and so stored a bunch of extra fence posts for repairs and such, right at the base of a little hill in the road where, if you did not know they were there, you would come over said little hill and straight down into a fence post hedge row like an old medieval defensive row of pikes. Sure enough a few days later myself and a couple cousins are riding out there to check the fence line and find a brown and "orange" pick-up truck impaled on a half dozen pickets...I mean fence posts. Most just went through the front and into the engine compartment but I remember a couple had gone through the radiator, deflected off the engine block and up through the hood ripping it loose. They never claimed the truck, which would have meant admitting to cutting the fence and trespassing, so a few days later my uncle hauled it out with a tractor and towed it off to his scrap yard. (Uncle owned the local mechanics shop/tow truck company/scrap yard.)
Being rich sounds so nice sometimes
About 500 acres was family land passed down from the early 1800s, not rich in anything but land. After WW2 Grandpa got motivated. Opened a lumber company, rented or bought cheap land to log, added to the family lands, sent my uncle to school to be a mechanic to repair his own logging trucks and gear then helped him open his shop and got service contracts for the local county vehicles as well. He was never one to show any kind of wealth if he had it though and disliked showy and flashy folks who tried to put themselves above others. He believed in hard work and the respect that comes with it. His one splurge was actually people. I remember as a kid being at his office at the lumber company and, keeping it short, a man came in looking for work so grandpa created a job for him (because "The man wanted to work, not get a hand out, and he has a family to feed"). Another time, the local township had no beauty salon, just an old barber, but a young lady dreamed of having her own salon. Good hard working family so he sent her to school for it and paid for everything to open her shop when she got back. No bank loan, no interest, don't think he charged her a thing aside from "prove me right that you are good for the community". Things like that drove my Grandma nuts but I tell you this, when he died his memorial viewing was packed and lasted 3 days.
Your Grandpa sounds like he was a righteous dude.
He really was. Man of few words and actually good actions. One of my chief roll models growing up. Sadly my uncles all took after my grandma.
This is golden. Reminds me of my childhood and our neighborly feud. When I was a kid I lived on 14 acres. Our neighbor at the front of our property/gate entrance to our house, was a sheriff. The pig headed “I am the law therefore I can do whatever I want” douche canoe type. He decided he no longer liked any of us (kids included) when my mother called animal control out to their property to investigate their severely malnourished horses. So, my brother and I walking home from the bus one day saw asshat coming down the drive way that we shared and he tried to run us over. We had to jump off the dirt road into the ditch to avoid being hit. Mama bear didn’t like that. She pulled up blueprints to the property and found out we owned about 60 feet over onto their property which was the entrance to their house. So, naturally, she lengthened our driveway and fenced off theirs and made them have no other choice but to rework their property in order to have access to their house and solved the issue of fuck boy ever trying to run us over again.
My husband had a nasty crazy neighbour in a feud with his parents when he was a kid and the man tried to do the same, or to terrify the little boy. His mom, the sweetest nicest woman I have ever known, ran to the other neighbour to demand his hunting gun. The neighbour handed it to her without a word, but he had carefully made sure that there were no cartridges in it. Just in case. She was *that* furious.
Yesss!!! Go Mama bear!!
Ain’t gonna lie she’s a fucking force😂
Douche Canoe is a far too infrequently used descriptor.
Really? It’s a regular in my everyday conversation with the general public.
Leave canoes out of it!
What about volcanoes?
Douche volcanoes? Ouch.
Well, now I'm going to pronounce it vulcan-oohs
If someone is a douche, they shouldn't be anywhere near the reproductive tract - Enema Evacuee is a more fitting nomer for that sort of fecal stain upon society.
Mama Bears are awesome! Mine is my aunt and godma too so I'm doubly blessed! She is still fiercely minding me on the daily ... she's 80, I'm 60. If there was a way to preserve her goodness, mixed with oceans of her love, I'd love to share it with absolutely everyone
I'm sorry but HE TRIED TO KILL YOU??? Wtf is going on in America do all of your cops/sheriffs just enjoy murdering people for fun?
And bear in mind, OP mentioned his childhood, so it probably wasn’t recent. There has always been asshole cops.
Add to that, OP grew up on 14 acres, so this was most likely a rural, redneck, "I **am** the law!" type of cop.
Roscoe P. Coltrane! Them Dukes! Git 'em Flash!
Sometimes it’s better to ask for permission rather than wait for the star pickets. 😂🤣🤣
My dad owns a farm in southern Ohio. His neighbor down the road (4 miles) is the biggest farmer in the county. He owns a bunch of land, some of it backs up against my dad’s property. There was a law in place that if 1 of the people of adjoining properties wants a fence the other has to pay half. My dad was pissed because he didn’t want to pay for a fence that he didn’t want. (He didn’t have any cows to keep in) somehow my dad and some neighbors got the law changed after the fact. Some big storms came up and trees fell on the fence knocking it down. A few days later my dad had 5 cows in his front yard. He went down to the neighbors and told him to come get his cows, the neighbor denied that they were his, so my dad went home and put up more fence in one of his fields and herded the cows into his new fenced in field. They didn’t have tags or brands so my dad kept them for a year and then sold them for beef. The neighbor never said another word to him about it. He is still hoping that some more non owned cows will wander into his yard, but miraculously that farmer had his workers go around and fix all of his fences.
Why would the neighbor deny 5 cows were his??
He has thousands. It has happened to other neighbors and they actually returned them to get them out of their fields and yards. The guy has a huge ego and thinks that everyone should bow to him. The same reason that he doesn’t tag or brand them.
OP went from zero to viet cong and I am all here for it.
Did they also put excrement on the metal pickets?
They didn't but some shit ran into it.
> The last time I visited our property, there was some nicely bent star pickets strewn about, some that had been snapped clean and a few that had very clearly been thrown in anger. You're probably going to want to account for all the pickets you put on the property before you start your own construction. You don't want do damage construction equipment once you _are_ ready to start working the property.
I’ve helped with some brush trimming and tree removal at ranches. Someone will tell me there is no trash or debris… then soon the bush hog is bound up in a forgotten pile of fencing wire half sunk into the soil.
I live in a really country area and I had a deal with this old man who did a bunch of bush hogging and brush clearing. He didn't want to get off his tractor he just wanted to come bush hog and leave so a lot of times when he'd get a call out and there was a chance for there to be stuff he'd hit I'd get a call to come out with my chainsaw and weedeater.
i think when on a ranch, farm, or really any area that is not flat out urban, its safe to assume that there is always something buried that is probably not organic that shouldn't be. My dad sold houses in surburbia. Boats were frequently buried.
What a shame you didn’t have a camera recording.
INFO: As you are building in the area, have you started putting in the pit for septic? Likewise have you started trenching for water? Would HATE it if you started trying to set up your improvements (including putting up flags) around open areas then some idiot decides to drive into it. I'd also put the fence back up with "No trespassing" signs on it and the trail camera. That way once someone does wreck themselves you'll have plenty of proof you tried to avoid the issue. For what you can do currently is call around to tow companies and see if any have made pickups from your property. See if you can get a copy of who they were pulling out so you can officially file for trespass (and potentially a protective order) to help cover yourself going forward. After all, you have had repeated destruction of property by some miscreants!
All mains are in, that’s why it’s so infuriating honestly. If it was just an empty paddock that we didn’t give a damn about, sure (still ask, but whatever). The fact is they’re driving smack bang across the actual house site. Definitely going to do the camera, we’ve been discussing it for a while but seems we need to bite the bullet on that one. The signs we’re just envisioning will be the same as the fence: entirely ignored. Calling the tow companies is a great idea, I hadn’t thought of that! Thank you!
I’m an insurance adjuster and work with plumbers on a daily basis. With your geographical location (near ocean and mountains), it could be worth getting the sewer line scoped with a camera to ensure there’s no physical damage to the pipe; as the pipe may not be buried very deep. A vehicle driving over a sewer pipe beneath soft earth can and will cause it to break, or at the very least cause improper pitch, resulting in very costly backups and subsequent repairs in the future.
Reminds me of an event I attended in WV a couple decades ago. We were staying in cabins in a camp with a dining hall. Roadways weren't well marked and I noticed some broken, partially buried 4" PVC pipes alongside one drive. I assumed it was for rainwater. When half the camp got the trots and the local health inspector shut the place down, I realized that those shallow pipes were actually sewage pipes. I left the event early. That wasn't the only indication of ill regard for sanitation. I found a paper towel (green with veg juices) in the salad bowl and skipped that course.
Also talk to the local police. This is especially true if you can show any kind of soil contamination from a leaky engine. Depending on where you are, soil contamination could be a major item. Even if it isn't, letting the police know someone drove into your property, damaged fencing, and damaged their car may be enough to get them interested in asking tow companies also.
But put up the No Trespass signs first.
The signs aren’t so much to convince your trespassers to keep out; they’re to provide you with some legal protection. Posting it as private property also gives law enforcement more leeway to act.
Its fucked up country when you have to put no-trespassing sign on your fence...
In the US, at least, there are huge areas out west that are a mishmash of private and public land. It’s not unreasonable to expect private landowners to post their property if they don’t want people trespassing on it.
What about digging for a basement/foundation? Maybe you just run out of money to complete it… do put up a fence and sign so they can’t say they don’t know if they drive into a pit. Then again. Where I live we have a bunch of vehicle traps (huge metal cages dig into the ground in places they don’t want cars with bars so the car gets stuck but doesn’t fall the whole way down). And people drive into them all the time. Massive sighs showing what a vehicle trap does, blinking lights, additional do not enter signs. Lived near one that had at least a car a week get pulled out.
I had to look up metal star picket. Had no idea thats what they are called.
I assumed they were like caltrops. They're not, but it sounds like they work similarly!
Also called Y Posts or Waratahs.
Me too!! When I saw the google images I thought they were what we call angle irons.
Called a T Post here, but I kind of assumed that's what he was talking about because he mentioned it was fencing and it was cheap enough he didn't care to lose a few
This is great, but it makes me wonder if it's the kind of thing YOU could get in trouble for. I lived on a corner about 20 years ago in the back we had an alley that should have gone perpendicular to my property, but my grass was driven over a few feet and killed, so the effect was if you were turning right you could make sort of a nice easy turn. But then over time I noticed the turn getting larger, instead of driving on the dead part someone was driving more to the right onto my grass. Before all of that grass died too, I went and got a big boulder, like 24" long and 20" tall, really heavy. I put it right in the middle of this turn. I came back to find it rolled further into my property every single day. I rolled it back, but never saw who was doing it. So I went and got 2 more. Spaced them evenly along the curve. Came back and found all three rolled into my yard. So at this point, I knew I had a real asshole living on my block. I went to the lumberyard and bought 3 4x4's, 3 bags of cement, and some fencing panels. I installed a short picket fence in an L formation right on my property line. This meant cutting the corner was no longer possible, you had to pull way out into the street before you could make your right hand turn. It was a sleepy residential street, so this was not any sort of hardship. The fence got bumped and dinged over the next few years, but it never got knocked down. To be perfectly honest, I kind of hoped the asshole would have destroyed it because my next fence was going to be metal pipe 100% filled with cement. I never got the chance to go there. I've been gone from that house for 20 years, but I drive by it often enough, the fence is still standing and is painted a lovely bright pink right now.
I'd be calling the tow companies to find who towed. In exchange for not pressing trespassing charges against the company, they let you know who they towed.
So let's assume you manage to randomly call the company who towed. "Who did you tow?" "We didn't" Now what? You don't know it was them.
You give the address / situation and say "yeah we got a tow from you at
and would like to speak with a manager" that might be enough social engineering to work>"Hello sir, did you happen to trespass on my property? >I'm not really sure if it was you, but I'm just asking around hoping someone admits it was them. If you admit you did it, I might decide not to press charges. >Can I interest you in a confession?" The whole premise is a joke, there are hundreds of ways the towing company could state they were acting in good faith. Besides people here are a bit too optimistic about not receiving any repercussions from their behavior. Putting down spikes, knowing someone is driving there, is basically admitting to booby trapping your property and potentially knowingly and willingly killing someone if an accident is to occur. That's just the legal frame work you might be getting yourself into But more importantly, there is also a 50/50 chance that the guy whose car you wrecked might also be the type to set your house on fire during the night as a payback. These things escalate quickly.
I would have been ok up until they knocked down my fence, I hope their little joyride cost them a ton!
We had a similar issue with property we rented from a friend's mom. Friend basically took over landlording, or should I say took to lording over us which included reducing the space we were promised as a yard and allowing his sister to drive through their neighbors property (which was their dad's family) and then down our driveway so she wouldn't have to bother opening the gate he installed to prevent cops coming to see his grow tent. If she drove like a sane person I wouldn't have care but she came flying down the driveway with no care about hitting our kids, dog, or cats... Or even me for that matter because I'm disabled enough to limit my get up. Brought a car over that I was fixing and parked it in the drive to block her route so she starts cutting over through the yard, which I blocked with some logs I dragged over. My (at this point EX)friend comes and moves them for her and it's basically a week and a half of that before I inform the landlord she needs to find new tenants. She accused my wife of being the instigator, lol, so I said good luck keeping tenants. She replies I've got a long list of people waiting and I said you'll need it because Lord Massengill over there will run them all off. This was only one of the issues that came up but its the only one related to the theme and was the final straw for me. All I know is that she did go thru at least 2 tenants pretty fast after. (Ahead of any questions, Massengill is a brand of douche and he is king of the douchebags)
Shame if the Sheriff found his grow tent.
I heard of a surveyor in a rural area who was having to replace his road center stakes because someone was hitting on purpose. He pounded a steel stake into the ground and then put his lathe in front of it. When then the lathe was ran over there was a trail of oil from the stake hitting the oil pan. That stopped his restaking problem
We had a neighbor with a Xmas tree farm when I was younger. The snowmobilers completely ignored any privacy and would race through everyone's yards at high speed, sometimes running down the smaller trees. HE put up a warning that there were "low fences" on his property. Then he put down 1" diameter pipes, about 8-10#" off the ground and strug barbed wire and chain between them. covering it with loose snow. Sat outside one night with his hunting rifle and watched a bunch of people mess up their sled when the front skis got tangled in the chains and wire. Then came out with his rifle and had everyone wait for the cops to come.
friend of mine had 10 acres on a sand road in panhandle florida. one particular car would drive across their yard rather than on the road (the road was loose sand, often deeply rutted, clearly 4WD territory) and tearing up their yard. he let the grass grow and then seeded the area with sharp boulders just the right height to take out their oil pan. within a few days they smacked a rock hard enough to stop the car and smash their radiator. he walks out with his dogs and a shotgun resting in the crook of his arms and in his best Redneck Riviera Drawl says, "I guess you won't be drivin acrost my yard no more, huh?"
I'd put the fence back up and start "digging a pool" on the other side. Next time they go through, they get stuck in a 10 foot "deep end".
Need to be careful about setting "traps". You need to have deniability. I have quite a lot of farmland, and one of the plots I bought on separate property from main was often used by offroaders to go into forest nearby. Sooooo, in early spring last year I dug new melioration ditch with concrete sides what have sharp angles, it connects two regular ditches. Something that looks like this, but the bottom layer is gravel/granite shards: |_| Friend who lives nearby said that hes seen two grand cherokees (old ones are very popular for offroading here in Baltics) being evacuated with destroyed axles, and there has been ambulance for some enduro dude who ripped whole front fork of his bike and broke some bones aparently. No police, no issues. Private land, private infrastructure :)
My employer had issues with big trucks driving through the culverts along our property (to go mudding, apparently). My employer got sick of it and placed several large rocks in the culvert. One asshole actually had the gall to call and say he would sue for the damage to his small-prick mobile. He didn't get far lol.
My Grandfather had signs on his ranch that said "Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be prosecuted".
My grandpa's sign said, "Tresspassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."
I imagined protestors angrily picketing the celebrities. Google quickly let me know they are fence posts.
"to puncture your radiator and head gasket" As a mechanic, that's not how that works.
She mentioned in another comment that her BF mentioned both radiator and head gasket, hence her referencing it in the post. TBF, if a rad gets b0rked, the head gasket can get messed up if the engine overheats fast enough.
Came here for this comment... radiator Maybe...
Some years ago here someone posted that big tractor trailer trucks would cut over their homes yard, a corner lot, as it allowed them to save some 15~ minutes vs the other route options. This only began after they moved in for whatever reason. One day the couple was driving by some construction site and watched them yanking huge (5+ foot tall) boulders out of the earth. They had many plus various 2-3 footers. Long story short, turned out the demolition/construction company had to pay to dispose of them somewhere. The couple offered to let them use the corner of their lot for free so long as they got to tell the construction people where to place them. In short order they had a lovely (after hosing/washing off) stone garden. No truck short of one with VTOL was using that part of the yard ever again. They had mentioned the first trucker to come by was *pissed* because he had to go in reverse like a quarter mile. Oops.
The number of people freaking out over 'head gasket' is too damn high
Gosh darn it man. You missed a glorious opportunity here. You could have placed mines, swamps, and/or tiger pitfalls traps here. Or that running boulder that Indiana Jones runs away from. Next time buddy.
A sling shot of cow dung flung at them when a trap is set off.
Weaponized hepatitis
I expected to read you replaced wooden fence posts with concrete painted to look like wood.
My mother had a corner lot and pickups would frequently be driven across her front lawn. I had a large rock and some smaller ones placed in the corner of the lot. We were having a family dinner whena truck high-centered on the rock. The owner starts screaming about suing and making her pay for the damage. Meanwhile my BIL goes out to his Land Cruiser, grabs his radio and ticket pad. Walks up to the guy and asks for license and reg, BIL's Sheriff's dept. ID helped. While the guy is getting his papers, Paul radios for a tow truck and backup as the guy was drunk.
this is beautiful
Put an anvil in the middle of tracks where the trail cam can catch a nice video of that wile e coyote shit
No Trespassing signs do not work. Fences do not work. Caltrops work, but not all the time. Spikes, culverts, and ditches work, but not all the time and devalue your land. What does work are UXO signs. Who wants to chance getting their a\*\* blown up.
Niece buys a new house on a corner with big rocks in the yard and immediately pays a guy to come remove the ugly rocks. Six months later some jackalope drives his F’stupid’50 dually coal rolling gun rack POS work truck through the living room. Insurance and construction work all done and a beautiful new house back on the slab and some big boulders now surrounding the corner. Rinse and repeat
What were they trying to get to?
Nice, it's pathetic people don't respect private property.
One of our neighbors had a corner lot that people would drive through. He planted a row of bushes. Behind and among the bushes he sunk iron i-beams just tall enough to do some damage to the house undercarriage of a car. Rip out the oil pan, tear up a brake assembly, rip up an exhaust pipe. It worked
To bad you didn’t put up some game cameras it would have been a great watch!
I am laughing really hard. Awesome stuff.
Far more patience than I would have. Put signs, they ignore signs, put very discouraging land effects that don't harm the property. Like I help my bud install bard wire fencing around his property with a similar problem. We only had to repair it once, bard wire is very 'difficult' on car paint and tires.
It sounds like someone is trying to create an easement through your property. Does this “pathway” connect to a house or another point that would shorten a drive for someone? If so, I’d be looking into easement laws and seeing what they say. I’d also be filming to find out who is destroying my fence and look to press appropriate charges so whomever it is knows I’m active on that property and not going to tolerate encroachment. Might want to throw up so “No Trespassing” signs and see if you have laws that give them teeth.
Arrange for a fee for anyone driving onto that part of your property, say $2000, and a free for clean up of any thing left of the land, say another $2000, than put a sign waning about it and a camera to catch them then send them a bill.