Anyone have tips for catching thieves?

[alan gage]

I had a friend, now deceased, who owned a lot of land locally. Lots of crop land and lots of pasture land along the wooded river. He was a great guy and I liked him a lot. Everyone here would have loved him. Lifetime farmer with tons of great stories.  I had permission to come and go on his land as I pleased. So did some other people. But he was passionate about trespassers and had a fierce temper. I'm glad I never was the recipient of it.

This same man also knew nearly every apple and pear tree in town and which ones had the best fruit, none of which were on his or public property. His kids laughed as they told stories of vacations in Florida where he'd have them sneaking under fences to grab a couple grapefruit off the tree and when I visited him one winter in Mexico he had me crawling through holes in fences to grab coconuts.

Had any of the landowners caught him and been upset I can see and hear in my head exactly how John would have handled it. He would have remained calm and let them speak their peace and then apologized and disarmed them with his genuine smile and good nature and complimented them on their property and asked them some questions about land in the area and then would probably end up being told to stop by and grab some coconuts whenever he wanted but don't sneak through the fence but come right on up to the house and have a couple drinks with me first.

In my mind I could never reconcile how John could be so protective of his own property and then to trespass on someone else's. And I don't know if he had it reconciled in his own mind or just never bothered to think about it.

Alan

[Patrick NC]

Every state has huge tracts of public land for everyone to enjoy so I don't understand why someone would put themselves at risk by trespassing on private property. It doesn't matter if it's 1/4 acre or 100,000, private means private and that's the end of conversation. Like most other landowners, I worked and saved for years to be able to buy mine. Not to mention the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars spent building trails and maintaining the property. Trespassers are not welcome at any time for any reason and I can promise you that no amount of explaining is going to make me ok with it. I do believe in rights. Especially 2A

[Southside]

In a return to the ambiguity mentioned earlier, I wonder if the principled defenders of ownership would call my actions planned for today of inspecting the irrigation ditch passing through multiple parcels a trespass? There is no expectation here that I seek permission to cross every boundary and if I did this I expect it would be met with skepticism. Gee, I hope I don't get no buckshot up my ars by the end of the day :laugh:

Ok - so now you are claiming to be messing around irrigation ditches, out west, during a drought and nobody has an issue with that?  
Time to not feed the troll folks.  

[Magicman]

alan gage's friend as described above could/would be labeled as a "Hypocrite".

Merriam-Webster; Hypocrite: A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.

[tamarackman]

I recently purchased a light bulb with a hidden integrated security camera. It plugs into a regular light socket and you manage the camera using a free app on you phone or computer. Once setup on your wifi network, you can ditch the app.

The camera was very inexpensive but I took the extra precaution of blocking all outbound WAN network traffic from it as it appears to be trying to upload snippets of video to 3 Chinese IP addresses.

I access the video feed using the rtsp protocol through vlc but any other app that supports rtsp should work. You can have multiple ones going at the same time provided there is a light socket and they are within wifi range.

[Walnut Beast]

alan gage's friend as described above could/would be labeled as a "Hypocrite".

Merriam-Webster; Hypocrite: A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.

Yes indeed!!!! I have known that type. Protect, amass more and take from others. The sad thing is that's what he taught his kids and you. 

[Magicman]

While growing up at times I would make a comment about what another family, etc. had and my Dad had the correct answer.  "Son, if they would pay everyone that they owed, they wouldn't have so much."

True then and true now.

[barbender]

Wise words from your Dad, Magic.

[Will.K]

Some more disordered thoughts and responses to a few good and bad points that have been made:

     There is a difference between walking in the woods and walking into someone's home. I think both common sense and conscience make a studious review of the distinctions unnecessary. 

     In my decision-making process, legality is not the first consideration. Why? I cannot come to peace with the concept of right and wrong being determined by imaginary lines on a map. Maybe this is a weakness in me, but I cannot. 

     Entitlement has come up several times. I reckon I can see why, but some of you are missing the point. I am not entitled to anything, I have no rights. Aside from my marriage, by which our promises and practices of fidelity and mutual love and help developed into a relationship of absolute trust and candor and interdependence, I cannot even imagine a means of getting true entitlement to anything. It is landowners who are guilty (guilty is too strong a word) of a fallacious sense of entitlement. They are legally entitled, literally, by virtue of a deed. Their relationship with the land beyond that depends on many things. But some things cannot be bought.

     I find, like Thoreau once did, that I know my way around many hills and hollers and woodlots much better than their owners do. I am no disciple of Thoreau, but am amused that from the cradle of transcendentalism to the legitimate scenes of communal life that he played house at, has spread a lust for ignorant possession that bears no resemblance to stewardship. I don't believe in rights. I do in responsibilities. 

     Do I wish to offend my neighbors, or to make them feel violated? I do not. I have read and believe that all of the law is summed up in the command to love your neighbor. And I have read that the law was not made for a righteous man. And I have listened with interest as I heard someone (who maybe had read the same thing) sing, "To live outside the law you must be honest"

     Which brings me to the matter of context. Do I go anywhere I wish? No. It is important to me that people are not made to feel uncomfortable in their homes. I value privacy myself and reckon most people do. So discretion is important. Now that many woods are full of cameras, discretion is not always possible. I often approach cameras and hold my name and phone number up to be seen (the first time I saw a trail camera I was walking with three friends, one of whom conceived the idea of stripping naked and marching past the lens, which we somberly did, to the amusement, I hope, of someone). I often leave this information in the dash of my truck too. I receive a fair number of calls, and they always end well. Context. Stealing. I recognize that some of my behavior has the potential to practically impact another person, and act, or refrain from acting, accordingly. 

     Asking permission. I have spent hundreds of hours researching landowner information. Before the existence of the GIS systems now in place in many areas, I would go to the local court house with lists of addresses, coordinates, etc. to search the platt maps and locate the names of owners. I likewise spend much time going door to door looking for the same information. If the answer from the owner is no, I respect it. There are many instances though when an owner cannot be easily contacted, or when the project at hand leads to wider than anticipated wandering, or when the scope of the activity makes prior contact impractical. As an example:

     I am currently working on a state contract to locate, document, describe and monitor habitats for two protected species. In order to do this I have walked on hundreds of owners over the last month, and have many more to go. If the job depended on asking permission to cross every line, the job would never get done, which according to some values, would be the appropriate conclusion to such a project.

     Context. Culture. Did you know that it wasn't too long ago that hospitality was the default in much of Appalachia? I was born into such a culture, though it had outlived its time, and is now gone in most of the communities I knew it. There are still those out there who, on catching a trespasser, will emphatically order them to sit down to breakfast. Not too many. But you can tell by looking what sort of a place you're in. Do right and wrong change as culture changes? Not exactly, but according to the law of love, sometimes. It may be that I am a little slow to accept some ugly realities.

     A landowner pitching a fit over a trespasser on some remote scrap of hillside reminds me so much of a child who shrieks, "He touched me!" A landowner who rolls out of his truck with a shotgun in hand is immediately hilarious. Do I love my neighbor? Not enough. I have laughed. I cannot force these images from my mind. 

     What are you buying when you buy your land? I don't know. The thing I've always paid for was a place I could sleep and do a few things without being told to leave. 

     Last year I was sitting down by the creek by my house and a teenage girl came thrashing through the brush. She went on by, not twenty feet from me, and didn't say a word. Later she came by again. She asked If I had seen her dog. I hadn't. It was old, she said, dying, and had wandered off. She found him lying just off the edge of my property line, yet alive, and she came down to the spot every day for a week with food and water, walking through my yard, which was the easiest route, until he died. She never asked permission to do this, or to bury him in my woods above the creek. What a rude girly. After a few days of this I called the police. No I didn't. She was quiet and normal and polite. I helped her dig a hole. 

     Expectation of exclusivity? I cannot wrap my head around it from any standpoint, practical, theoretical, christian, or heathen. It seems to me that if you owned vast tracts of woods it would be odd and alarming if no one ever walked on it. That legal title bestows the power of absolute dominion is a city notion that is violently divorced from natural reality. I wish my creek to run upstream, the sycamores to produce apples, and those kids to quit playing in the woods. I don't know.

     I did not expect or wish for support from the users of this forum. I view sites like these, ideally, as a means for a myriad of convergent minds to chip away at a subject from different angles, creating, hopefully, a gem of a result that can be appreciated from just as many. In reality most forums prop up a target, which is then beat into the dirt by a stampede, all heading from and to roughly the same herd and same goal. It is my fate, apparently, to be the worm slithering beneath the flattened board, and while I do not repent of my dissent, I am truly sorry to have been distasteful. I trust, hope at least, that you all would not find me so in person. 

     All this, and what I meant to say was: Don't automatically lump all the people who show up on your cameras in with those who are stealing your stuff. Well, make whatever judgments you wish, but, if you think about it, you might yourself see a distinction.

     
     

[Jeff]

Your calm reasoning MAKES ME SICK. Im getting the heebee jeebies having you lurking around my forum. I mean it, as the owner of this internet property, I find your views disgusting. 

[barbender]

Yeah, that seems a lot of talking to say "I make my own rules". I'm sure I would be delighted as a landowner to be informed I had a couple of endangered toads on the property that this guy wandered around and found, and now I will be forbidden from using the land the way I intended. If the laws don't suit you here, why don't you go to one of those wonderful places where you can wonder people's property at will, maybe you can just go in the house and cook yourself supper, too?🤦🏻‍♂️

[Ricker]

 What I see is most respectful people honor a owners wishes, whether it's raw land or a home do not enter means the same thing.  It not up to you decifer why they don't want you to trespass.  You can be as philosophical as you want but it is what is, you want to do what you want to do, how you want to do it.  Which I look at like a child jumping up and down shrieking "but I want to" after being told no by their parent.

[Will.K]

Your calm reasoning MAKES ME SICK. Im getting the heebee jeebies having you lurking around my forum. I mean it, as the owner of this internet property, I find your views disgusting.

Well sir, I'm sorry that's so, and will refrain from any further participation. I find reading here, though, has been informative, and until you concieve of a way to bar unregistered guests, I'll continue to learn in silence. 
Take care, Jeff and all

[Southside]

You sir are a true Communist. You believe everything is "communal" in terms of property.

You are also an "agent of the government" since you stated that you are working on a state contract. Guess what, that means the 4th Amendment RESTRICTS your actions. That little bit of wording is located in the "Bill of Rights", something I am sure you don't believe in either.

From what you have stated, and knowing how such projects actually work, because I have participated in them,  the landowners you are surveying have either been informed of your study and approved of your presence, or they were informed and told that by not responding that permission was presumed to have been granted "for the limited purposes of xxx"...and nothing more. So technically someone has requested permission and one way or another been granted it.

I GUARANTEE there are parcels you have been instructed to avoid, because the rightful owners did not consent to the wanna be Thoreau aimlessly skipping across their land.

You are a troll, who by his own admissions has been measured and found wanting. I suggest you try pressing your beliefs on one of the many military installations that dot the landscape. Let us know how that works out for you.

[Otis1]

So that guy basically derailed the topic of the thread, advocated for rampant trespassing, and then stated that he's gonna continue trespassing here. Disrespectful. 

I've done thousands of acres of fed, state, and reservation contracts. No need for trespassing, either find the landowner or go the long way around. Usually there's more people watching you than you think.

I was enjoying all of the new camera technology and security ideas.

[Walnut Beast]

Will K. You stated. Do I go everywhere I want to no. Exactly you know where you can get away with it. Talks cheap. Your beliefs go along the same line of not thinking you need to pay taxes. You will eventually run into somebody that won't play your little games. I was thinking the same thing Southside said. You stated you laugh at the macho landowners. Well let's see you be a real macho man and roam around a military instillation and see how things work out for yah 😂. 

[sandhills]

And ive never caught one after the fact, that takes 4k quality cameras, luck and knowing who they are. They all wear hoodies and hats anyways.  And if they get busted they get a court date and released then skip court.  The law has extremely low deterrence on the current generations addiction driven theft.  



Prevention is more important.  

I have run off a lot of them at the fence with a gun and a flashlight.  Not much sleep, need a good outdoor dog.  Put your gas tanks all facing one camera.  They need a lot of expensive fuel to drive around stealing and scoring expensive drugs all night with no income.  The gas can is how you get them on camera.

filled with sugar water, see how far they get....

[Tom King]

In the country I live in, you don't get to make up your own rules for land that someone paid for, and pays property taxes on.  You may live in an alternate reality, but I live in real reality.

We have an abandoned rock quarry, with 8 tenths of an acre of crystal clear water, and miles of trails.  No one who is not invited is welcome.  We could lose everything if someone got hurt here.  I have had bus loads of people arrested for trespassing, and don't mind lobbing in a bird bomb if someone is back there who is not supposed to be.   

Sometimes, if there is a car parked where they think they are hiding, they get a ton of dirt dumped so they can't move their car, and a broken handled shovel to get out, along with a picture of their car with license plate in view, parked right under the No Trespassing signs.

We don't get many return uninvited visitors, and that's the way it has to be.  We have years of work tied up in this place, and don't intend to lose it to some selfish, lazy idiot.

[Roxie]

So that guy basically derailed the topic of the thread, advocated for rampant trespassing, and then stated that he's gonna continue trespassing here.

I was enjoying all of the new camera technology and security ideas.

You are absolutely correct and by the powers vested in me, this topic will return to trying to protect your property and if necessary, I will start a new thread and move the trespassing bragging comments into a separate topic entitled Manifesto (or word salad) of a narcissist.
Carry on.

[trapper]

takeing my game cameras to my daughter this afternoon. vacent house next door to her that she is planing to buy to rent out was broken into last night.  Appears someone broke in and slept there last night.  Found a cell phone on the lawn that will be given to to the police with the report from the owner.

[HemlockKing]

I’m actually looking at motion sensor security cams solar as I want them down my trails. Has anyone tried these? I’m gonna do some searching shortly but figured I’d ask suggestions. Any good camera suggestions with good image quality.

[Roxie]

It would be hard to improve on stavebuyer's Spartan cameras but I noticed in his license plate photo, he had a Tasco and that's the same brand that I bought at Walmart for $40 and that included the batteries and photo card. I counted myself a winner because I didn't need the help of my grandkids to set it up. 

[mike_belben]

"4K" is the current high end.  

Wired is more reliable than wireless.

Cheap chinese cams and apps are watching you more than thieves. 

Not every camera can read a face or license plate.  You need plate reader cams that have enough resolution for there to be pixels to blow up and ID a plate or a face for recognition software.  


Watch security company vids on youtube for a while before purchase.  There are a ton.  Expect to start @ $1G for a system youll always be pleased with. 

[dgdrls]

Almost nothing worse than a thief

You have to be on YOUR GAME for this to work,
Start setting some big spring traps around the place with
some tripwire pyrotechnics

coupled with the cameras  

D

And you hurt the thief then they sue you and own your place 😂. Sounds crazy it happens. And it's happened to people that were nice to someone they gave permission to hunt or something and get hurt and get sued for a bundle. First thing a lawyer will find out is if the person owns property and there ready to go to work. It's best to be smart to protect your property or you could loose it

I appreciate your comment,  You're correct you have to be smart, but you also have the right to defend your possessions, and anyway those pesky nocturnal critters
and tearing up my stuff!
D

[chet]

Our firehall was broken into a couple of times before the covid thing. We set up a game camera, and sure enough he came back. The local city cops said we got some great pics, including some really good close ups. They did ask if we could try again and get colored photos, as they were preferred to the black and white ones we had.  :
The guy was finally sentenced a couple weeks ago. Three cases of breaking and entering, destruction of public property, and theft, for which he got a whooping one year in our county jail.  :(   Gotta love our court system.