The land was posted. The boundary was marked. The family already had established stands in place.
Then they found another one.
In a Reddit post, a hunter said his family discovered a deer stand that someone had built on their private property without permission. This was not a case where the line was unclear or the woods blended into a neighboring tract in some confusing way. The poster said the property was posted, and the signs included contact information.
That alone would have been enough to make most landowners furious. But the placement of the stand made the whole situation worse. According to the poster, the stranger’s stand was built above their existing stands, which made those established stands unsafe to use as long as the new one was there.
That changed the problem from annoying trespasser behavior to a serious safety issue.
Anyone who has hunted long enough knows that stand placement is not random. You are thinking about wind, deer movement, shooting lanes, visibility, backstops, nearby houses, roads, property lines, and other hunters. When someone sneaks in and sets up wherever they want, they are not only crossing a boundary. They can also create a situation where multiple hunters are unknowingly covering the same area.
That seemed to be the poster’s biggest concern. They knew who was responsible, and they did not see it as an honest mistake. Their question was not really whether the stand belonged there. It clearly did not. What they wanted to know was how to handle it in a legally responsible way.
That detail matters. A lot of people might have been tempted to march out there, tear it down, and dump the pieces by the road. The poster did not come across like he wanted a fight. He wanted the problem handled without putting himself or his family in the wrong, especially since the person responsible apparently lived nearby.
The post also had that familiar private-land frustration baked into it. The family had done the things landowners are supposed to do. They had posted the property. They had made the line clear. They had contact information available. They already had hunting setups there, meaning anyone who walked in and built a stand would have seen enough signs to know the land was not open.
Still, somebody brought in a stand and put it up anyway.
The poster later clarified in the comments that the entire perimeter of the property was posted, including the side that touched the neighbor’s property. He also said the neighbor’s property ended at the wood line, so it was an easy boundary to mark. In other words, this was not the kind of situation where someone wandered 30 yards too far through a messy patch of timber and got confused.
There was even a clear path right to the suspected person’s house, according to the poster.
That does not prove everything on its own, but it does paint the picture. Someone knew where they were going. Someone knew the property line was there. Someone either ignored the posted signs or decided the risk was worth it.
And now the actual owners could not safely use their own stands until the issue was resolved.
That is the part a lot of non-hunters miss in property disputes like this. A deer stand is not just a chair in a tree. It is a fixed position where a person may be sitting with a firearm or bow during low-light hours, often before sunrise or near sunset. If another stand gets placed in the wrong spot, especially above or behind an existing setup, it can make the whole area unsafe.
The family was not only dealing with trespass. They were dealing with someone interfering with how they could safely hunt their own land.
Commenters split into two main camps, but almost nobody thought the stand should stay.
Some people said the answer was simple: take it down. A few said if it was on private property without permission, the family had every right to remove it. One commenter joked that the poster had just found a free tree stand, though others warned that taking it or destroying it could create more trouble than it solved.
Several hunters told him to document everything first. They recommended trail cameras, photos of the stand, photos of the posted signs, and proof of the boundary line. A few said a camera mounted high in a nearby tree could catch whoever came back to use it. Their point was that a path leading toward a house might suggest who was responsible, but clear video or photos would be much stronger if law enforcement or the game warden got involved.
Others pushed for a calmer neighbor-to-neighbor approach. One commenter suggested knocking on the door and asking if they realized the stand was on the wrong property, then telling them it needed to come down because the family planned to hunt that area. That commenter said the heavier options, like police or game wardens, would still be there if the person refused.
Not everyone liked that soft approach. Plenty of hunters said someone who builds a stand on posted private land probably already knows what he is doing. To them, this was not a friendly misunderstanding. It was trespassing, and the fact that the property was clearly posted made it worse.
A few commenters talked about how these situations can poison neighbor relationships for years. They said the poster needed to protect his land, but also remember that the person responsible may still live next door after the stand is gone. That made documentation and a clean paper trail even more important.
Others brought up hunting apps and county GIS maps. Their argument was that with modern mapping tools, there is less excuse than ever for setting up on someone else’s land. If a hunter is close to a property line, it is on him to know exactly where he is.
For the poster, the issue came down to ownership, safety, and boundaries. Someone had walked past posted signs, built a stand where it did not belong, and made the family’s own hunting setup unsafe. Now the family had to decide how firm to be without letting the situation turn into an even bigger mess.
