Trouble With Trespassers

It's been exciting owning some property near Brooksville, Florida that draws in a lot of game. I've been

heading up there nearly weekly to check on my beehives, fill feeders, tend the food plot, change
batteries and check my trail cams. The only downside of the property has been dealing with trespassers. Last month I found a bunch of brush dumped on my property with truck tracks coming from a neighboring property. With the piles of brush I found a receipt with a name on it. I also had a couple of pictures of people walking through my food plot on the same date as the receipt showed. I fenced off the access points from the adjacent property, posted private property signs all over the place and held on to the receipt and the pics, hoping that would be the end of it. Unfortunately it wasn't.

This past week I headed up to check my cameras and change batteries in the feeder. I've been excited to check the pics lately because the buck's antlers are growing so quickly that every week brings new surprises as they reveal what the hit list may be this Fall. As I walked up to where my feeder is, my excitement turned into a sinking disappointment, my trail camera had been swiped. After changing the battery on my feeder, which was luckily still there, I walked over to my brother's feeder to discover that his camera had been taken as well. Near the front of my property I found an attic fan with a cordless drill in the road. It looked like someone had ripped the fan off the abandoned home in front of my property and were using the drill to get to the copper coil. They probably heard the feeders go off and went to investigate. After finding two $100 cameras they must have left the drill in their excitement to hock em' and buy some more meth.

I called the Sheriff's deputy out who was very friendly and helpful, unlike St. Pete Cops are here. He took the drill

Trespassers in the food plot

for fingerprinting as well as the receipt bearing the name of a man that has a record of drug possession and petty theft in the area. He also said they would stop by my property when they do their rounds at the Golf Course next door to make their presence known to the locals. That's all great but I don't know how much good it is going to do. I have to figure out how to keep my feeders and trail cameras going while monitoring who's coming on the property. Now that someone has a couple SD cards loaded with pictures of deer, I need to guard against poaching as well. The joys of owning property.

After pondering ideas like rigging up Swiss Family Robinson traps that would crush some trespassers and cause others to fall into pits loaded with poisonous snakes and beehives, I finally settled on some more practical applications for security. For starters I put up a fence blocking the last entrance vehicles might be able to access my property. Hopefully this will help our feeders stay put as not many thieves want to carry a huge corn feeder a couple hundred yards. I brought up my last two trail cameras, which are cheap and take rather poor quality photos, and camouflaged them in well while I am awaiting a better camera I just ordered online.  I then built a steel security box for the new camera.

I saw some security boxes online for about $30 but the metal looked a little on the thin side. I took
matters into my own hands and made a box that I would love to see someone try to break open. I had some scrap 3 inch galvanized angle iron that is 1/4" thick left over from a skate ramp we recently tore down. With this I welded together a lock box that will bolt from the inside behind the

camera to a big pine tree near my feeder. The top cover is secured with a master lock. This will hold my good camera at my feeder and I'll hide my cheaper cameras near the food plot and the main drive way to monitor for trespassers.

Hopefully I'll be collecting a weekly harvest of deer pictures at my feeder once again and not have to experience another stolen camera. We'll see how it goes. I know that where there's a will there's a way, I'm just hoping these people get the point and move on to easier pickings.