There are times during the year when the your Association's two fulltime land managers are not available by telephone every time someone calls the office. It also may be a couple of days before that telephone call is returned. The time away from the office is well spent for the Association. What your Association land mangers are doing in the field is enforcing the Association's land contracts. Several examples may make you feel better the next time you call rather than frustrated when we are not there.
Contingency contracts are those that have inclusions for 'no cattle', 'no hayed drains',' no fall till' clause etc. We are out there to ensure these contracts are fulfilled not just at the time of contract renewal, but also during the life of the contract especially during the hunting season. It does a lot of good as a preventative measure when we knock on the landowner's door during the season to ensure he knows we are out there watching.
A fine buck from a member that we worked extra hard with to ensure his success. |
Properties under contract for the first year are visited as a feedback check with the landowner to ensure all is well.
Probationary contracts are those where we experienced issues contrary to the contract requirements the previous year. We specifically target these properties as an evaluation of whether we will renew that contract or not.
Posting signs is a constant effort. We buy our signs in bulk of 500 at a time. A good year is when we buy a 1,000, a tougher year is when we go for a third buy. If every sign took only 5 minutes to post the signs would not be an issue. The reality is by the time property lines are checked, signs posted initially when the contract is signed then checked again before the regular hunting season, during the season and in time for spring turkey there is much more time invested in each sign than they may seemingly require to nail to a post.
About as interesting as it gets for your land mangers is when they actually take the time to hunt the land. And, when they hunt a piece of land it is to survey that property during the hunting season as sometimes when a contract is signed on a property during the summer the habitat and productivity of the land is different during the winter. A snapshot of one 12 hour day last week went like this. Drove out to the properties, road inspected the signs posting on 2,700 acres, posted 24 signs on corner posts (all replacement signs) hunted three properties, found three good sized coveys harvesting one quail for each of the two dogs, found three very good turkey flocks and two areas heavily used by deer. The end result is now the land managers have seen these properties several times, walked the corner posts of the better ones and now can give very thorough recommendations to members of where to hunt this land.
Repeat the issues above an average of three days a week and it readily becomes apparent the 56,000 miles put on just one of our vehicles last year is in direct support of your Hunting Association.
