How to deal with people running dogs
I belong to and am one of the officers of a 2000 acre deer lease in the southwest part of central Arkansas (the foothills of the Ouachita Mtns), if that makes sense. On our northern border we have a smaller lease that we think is causing serious problems for us. They're running dogs on us. We though we could deal with it, except this year, the locals there are telling us these guys are driving down the county roads that are our borders and dropping the dogs into our lease, so they'll run the deer back north to theirs.
Last weekend, one of our members ran into one of theirs who bragged to them about the massive 8-pt. they killed. This was the biggest 8-pt. I've ever heard of down here. One of the guys killed a 10 pt. at 200 lbs (undressed weight) with a 24 inch spread. The 8-pt. had a 28 inch and will probably score higher than the good size 10pt. Anyway, back to my point... One of our member piped up, finally letting us know that was a deer he'd been tracking and with gamecam pictures of the 8-pt. making a rub in his hunting area. This happens to be the most southern part of our lease. Needless to say he was upset.
We've had dogs all over the lease the last two weeks. You think it's a pretty good chance their dogs caused us to lose this awesome 8-pt. and maybe others? How in the world do we deal with this?