© Othmar Vohringer
Each year I sit on my desk about two weeks before Christmas and write cards for family, friends and associates. Over the years the cards I write have accumulated to a small mountain on my desk. Sometimes I forget to include a few people in my personal Christmas greeting list. However, there are certain people that I will never forget.
These people are the kind and generous landowners that grant me permission to hunt on their land. For various reasons that I’ll not go into in this post it becomes each year more difficult to obtain permission on private land and if after many days, weeks or even months of knocking on doors I finally do get permission I’ll be thankful for it.
To me being thankful to landowners is not just sending a Christmas card. I personally deliver the card to them and I always make sure to hand them a small gift of my appreciation too. The gift can be a bottle of wine provided I know what wine the landowner likes, a box of his favourite cigars, or a few steaks and roasts from the deer or turkey I got of the property.
To some that might seem too much trouble. If you are, then consider this. The landowner invites you as his guest and it is common for guest to be appreciative of the invitation. Remember that landowners are under no obligation to grant you access to their property. Landowners also carry a certain risk in having strangers on their property, especially in these lawsuit happy times. If a landowner grants you permission to hunt then he extents a certain measure of trust and the least you can do is to be thankful for that.
So as you get ready to send out Christmas cards don’t forget the landowners that grant you permission to hunt on their land and it doesn’t hurt to share your harvest with them either, and I am not talking about the neck meat from a rutting buck or the though legs of a turkey. Bring the landowner some of the finest cuts of game all cleanly wrapped and labeled.
This blog post has been brought to you by Othmar Vohringer Outdoors
Tags: Christmas, Hunting Private Land, Landowner Hunting Permission, Private Land
3 comments:
A great reminder for all of us who use the outdoors and fish or hunt on any private property. Thanks for the very meaningful idea.
Good post Othmar and some great ideas for giving thanks.
I thought of that post while writing Christmas cards. There was also a discussion about the end of the hunting season on a large forum.
Hunters thanked the boss for giving them a day off work. Others thanked their wives for being kind or friends they shared a hunting camp with. But not a single one of the hunters gave any consideration or thanks to the land owners that gave them permission to hunt their land.
-ov-
Post a Comment