Do you confront vandals?

[Jhg]

What do you think?

My wife thinks I am on crack when I walk up to vandals and tell them to knock it off. She is right of course, at least sometimes.
We don't need another ass-hat right? Or is it a teaching moment?

I feel our young men need mentors that ask them to reach higher than what their peers require of them (which is not much). I also feel the mentors that are available usually set a very low bar. The old "don't rock the boat" style of manliness. Which is actually a cop out IMO. Nothing is worse than a bunch of guys keeping quiet when a buddy crosses the line.

I was a trouble maker. It helped me immensely to have someone stand up to me and say "thats not right".


A trail sign shot up and no backstop behind it. Hikers in line of fire.

D4411674-37AB-4000-834C-A972219A99D5.jpeg (176.07 KiB) Viewed 697 times

[wawhitey]

Looks just like the street signs in my neighborhood. I dont get it. Lot of idiots, dirtbags, and dirtbag idiots out there.

[Swede]

As a Forest Service employee, I never confronted a person shooting signs, but I visited a fairly significant number of people using or abusing the forest. I actually liked stopping to visit the wood cutters and campers. The campers would sometimes offer me a soda or coffee. They wanted to find out where to hunt deer or elk. I let them know I was concerned that their camp was clean when they left. I recorded their vehicle license numbers etc.
The wood cutters never offered coffee, but I checked their permit and fire equipment. When I caught a person with no permit, I would take their driver's license and write down their vehicle description and license number. When I was finished, I would return their driver's license and inform them that I would be back in the office about 4:30 PM. When I got there, I was going to check to see if they had purchased a wood permit. If they had, I would throw my note away. If not, I would turn it over to law enforcement and it would cost them a lot more than the cost of a permit. At that I got 100 % compliance, and I did not have to take two days away to go to court about 200 miles away. I was satisfied it was a win-win situation for everyone.

[Lefty]

Generally, you bet I do! But I'm not an idiot about the way I go about it either. I try to be informative, not confrontational. Most recent times accessing areas closed to motorized vehicles, littering, and trespassing.

The young guys shooting ducks after LST I just try to inform them .

My wife one time got on some guys with big UTVs on a 50-inch trail. They were drunk And Ill say I was lucky that they were nice drunks. She's confronted drunks twice and a guy high on meth . We had some serious talks, obviously, I didn't make my point the first two times.
The meth head got out of hand, he somehow worked his way into he front door. My wifes problem is she has never had a situation with bad people

[Jhg]

Yep. I have modified my approach to include deciding 1) if I say anything will it make any difference and 2) are these guys going to escalate it.

An example is near us the Forest Service has areas open to cut your own Christmas trees. Buy a $25 permit gets you 3(I think) trees if you want to go cut them. The permit has on it a short guidance on how to choose a tree-. Anyway, this dude had cut a 30 foot spruce and "harvested" the top 7 feet. I was pretty annoyed but said nothing. A guy like that is so self serving getting reprimanded out in the woods by a 63 year old wouldn't have changed a thing then or next time.

You can never show uncertainty however, if you do engage. Methheads? All bets off just leave. This is why I carry in the woods but not in town. Its crazy on Public land these days.

F5BE3944-2CE0-4B46-848B-1C70B797B25E.jpeg (112.08 KiB) Viewed 678 times

[>>>---WW---->]

Looks like I'm the odd man out so far. But yes, I do confront vandals.

After I retired from my regular job, I took over a part time job managing a national forest campground. Boy, the tales I could tell you about that experience. I confronted many vandals and just plain troublemakers. Most of them seemed to listen and start obeying the campground rules. How ever there was one nut case that pulled a Beretta M9 out and I gracefully backed away from that situation !

[Swede]

WW: What did you do after getting away from the "nut" with the Beretta? Did you contact law enforcement?
I had a nut with a rifle come at me and my son while we were sitting in my pickup on an open BLM road. We were told to leave. We did and I called the BLM cop. I never heard any more on the matter, but doubt it was very effectively managed.