A Reddit user said he walked onto his own property and found something hanging there that he knew immediately did not belong. According to the post, it was a trail camera mounted on his empty farmstead, and he was certain he had not put it there himself. He had already checked with neighbors and acquaintances, and none of them claimed it either. So from the moment he found it, he was staring at the possibility that someone had been scouting or watching his land without permission. He posted because he wanted to know what people would do in that spot: take it down, pull the card, leave it, or handle it some other way.
The setting mattered because, from the way he described it, this was not some active camp or a busy shared parcel where a misplaced camera might make instant sense. He called it an empty farmstead. That makes the camera feel a lot more deliberate. Somebody had gone onto the property, picked a tree or post, and left a trail cam there even though the owner had no idea it was up. He was not talking about old gear from a prior season he had forgotten about. He was talking about a camera he knew was not his, on land he controlled.
A lot of the replies pushed him toward the same general idea: take the camera down, leave some kind of note, and let the owner reveal himself if he wanted to explain. One commenter told him to remove the camera and leave his name and phone number in the same location in case it was some kind of honest mistake or leftover permission from a previous owner. Another person said he should put up his own camera to watch the spot and see who came back looking for it. Someone else suggested he should make sure the property was properly posted and call the game warden so there would be a record if the person had knowingly trespassed. The whole comment section had the same tone running through it: people assumed this camera had not appeared there by accident, and several were already thinking a second hidden camera was the smartest way to catch whoever had put it up in the first place.
The landowner decided not to guess. He contacted his local game warden. Then he came back and updated the post with what he had been told. According to his update, the warden said it was illegal to place the trail camera there and that it was fully within the landowner’s rights to take it down. He said the warden also told him that what happened after that was up to him — whether that meant leaving a note, destroying the camera, or handling it some other way. But the detail that really changed the whole situation was the warden’s offer: he said he would place another camera there himself and monitor it. In other words, instead of just taking the trespass camera down and hoping that ended it, the landowner now had a chance to turn the spot into a trap for whoever came back.
That update changed the whole feel of the thread. What started as a guy finding an unknown camera on his farmstead and asking the internet what he should do turned into a real game-plan with law enforcement involved. The camera was not just some random object anymore. It became evidence that somebody had been on the property without permission, and the owner now had a game warden telling him plainly that the placement was illegal and offering to help catch the person if they returned.
A few of the comments underneath the update kept pushing practical ideas. One person said to check the photos on the SD card in case the owner had accidentally photographed himself or captured something else useful. Another said to look around for more cameras because if somebody was scouting a property, there was a good chance one camera was not the only one out there. Others talked about leaving notes, giving the person one chance to call, or using a second camera to catch them if they came back for the first. The tone stayed the same all the way through: nobody thought the owner was overreacting, and almost everybody treated the mystery trail cam like a sign that somebody had already crossed a line and might do it again.
So the full situation he posted about was this: he found a trail cam on his empty farmstead that did not belong to him, checked with neighbors and acquaintances, and still could not identify who had put it there. He asked what he should do. Then he contacted his local game warden, who told him the camera had been placed there illegally, confirmed he had every right to remove it, and even offered to put a second camera in place to monitor the spot and catch whoever returned.
What do you think — if you found a stranger’s trail camera on your land and the game warden offered to hide another one to catch whoever came back for it, would you take that offer immediately?
Original Reddit post: Someone put a trail cam on my property with out permission
