Central Maine Hunting Report: October 31, 2007
The 2007 deer season extravaganza is upon us. It is an exciting time of year to live in New England. Please don’t even get me started on the Red Sox. How am I supposed to get up early to go hunting.…I mean work…. when I, like the rest of Red Sox Nation is glued to the television until the wee hours? My father-in-law wants to know why the games have to start so late. I need to take a class in time management. World Series and sleep deprivation aside, deer season has renewed my deliberation of hunter access, private property and “posted” signs. I feel a history lesson forthcoming.
Today’s sportsman, without doubt, have to deal with a vastly different landscape than did their preceding brethren. More difficult? Not as good as? More restricted? I’m not sure, but it is unquestionably different. To start, the Native American concept of land ownership was exceptionally different from the legalistic and individual nature of European ownership. A major factor in treaty disputes was Native Americans’ concept of land and land ownership. Indians fought among themselves over hunting rights to a territory but the Native American idea of “right” to the land was different than that with which we have become accustomed. The Indians had no concept of “private property,” as applied to the land. For the most part, the Indians practiced communal land ownership. That is, the entire community owned the land upon which it lived. Certainly, the idea of an individual having exclusive use of a particular piece of land was completely strange to Native Americans. The question begs to be asked…..did the Native Americans make use of “POSTED” signs. Were they ever given a reason to exclude access? Had trespass even been imagined?
Let’s move forward. In the early years, in what is now the United States, the British granted charters to large land companies, which were essentially comprised of wealthy land speculators who resided in England. These land companies had the authority to issue land grants to those individuals who were loyal to the crown. The crown ultimately controlled all of the lands in these huge charters, with the land companies acting as agents of the crown. Some of the more famous of these land companies were the London Company, Massachusetts Bay Company and the Plymouth Company. A proprietorship was responsible for the granting of lands from the charter, as agent for the charter (and therefore, for the crown). When these disbursements of land were made, the land itself was laid out in descriptive form in much the same way as later deeds, with landmarks and other prominent identifying data. Do you suppose these land proprietors put up “POSTED” signs. Did you have to be a loyalist in order to hunt on someone else’s land? And…..what about the deer? Who did they belong to?
For sure, times are now different. How did we arrive where we now are? We cannot go back in time to a simpler and perhaps more ideal world. We reside and must conduct ourselves in the world that we now live in. No doubt, my deliberations will continue…… what would Daniel Boone think?
