The landowner’s family said the property was not some empty neighborhood shortcut. It was 40 acres in Kentucky, outside town limits, and it was used for hunting. According to the Reddit post, the owner had posted more than 300 private property and no-trespassing signs around the perimeter.
For years, the land had not been bordered by nearby homes. Then a neighboring property sold, and the new owners moved onto it in an RV with their children. After that, the problem started almost immediately.
The owner walked the property daily with his dogs. In just two weeks, he found the neighbor’s kids playing in the woods on his land nine different times. He spoke with the parents four times. The sheriff had already gone out to talk to the family twice. Still, the kids kept showing up.
The original Reddit post can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/6t4kfj/neighbor_kids_keep_coming_on_my_dads_property/
The parents’ response made the situation even more frustrating. According to the post, they brushed it off as a “kids will be kids” issue. They also argued that if the landowner did not want people accessing the property, he should build a better fence.
That answer did not sit well with the family. Fencing 40 acres is not cheap, and the land was already heavily posted. More importantly, the concern was not only about ownership. It was about safety.
The landowner had already told the parents the property was used for hunting. Hunting season was approaching, and having children wandering through the woods created a serious risk. Even responsible hunters have to identify what they are shooting at and what lies beyond it. Kids moving through posted land without permission make everything more dangerous for everyone.
The parents reportedly turned that warning around and said they would blame the landowner if one of their children got hurt. That left the family in an impossible position. They were trying to keep kids off land where hunting happens, but the parents were acting like the danger was the landowner’s fault rather than the trespassing.
The poster said the owner planned to speak with the sheriff again. In the meantime, they wanted advice on what else could be done before hunting season started. The stakes were obvious. Nobody wanted a child hurt. Nobody wanted hunters placed in a situation where they had to worry about trespassing kids hidden in the woods.
The post captured a kind of rural conflict that can turn serious fast. One family sees woods as a place for their kids to roam. The landowner sees private hunting property that is already marked, already warned, and already becoming unsafe because the warnings are being ignored.
Commenters mostly pushed the family to make the trespassing official. Several said the owner should ask the sheriff about written trespass warnings. If the parents had been formally warned and the kids kept coming onto the property, commenters believed the parents could face consequences.
Others said this was not about being mean to children. It was about preventing a tragedy. One commenter put it plainly: the choice was either to be the bad guy now or risk a child being hurt later. That was the tone of much of the thread.
A number of commenters suggested contacting child welfare if the parents continued allowing the kids to roam on marked hunting land. Their view was that the parents had been told about the danger and were still letting the children go there. That could become a child safety issue, not just a property dispute.
Trail cameras also came up. Commenters recommended putting cameras high enough that kids could not easily grab them, ideally with no-trespassing signs visible in the frame. That way, the landowner could document that the kids were still entering posted property after repeated warnings.
Some commenters also reminded the family that hunters still have to follow the basic rule: know your target and what is beyond it. The presence of trespassers does not excuse unsafe shooting. But that did not mean the landowner had to accept children wandering through hunting land after being told to stay out.
By the end, the advice was firm: document every incident, get law enforcement involved in writing, make the parents’ notice impossible to deny, and treat the problem as urgent before hunting season turned a trespassing issue into something much worse.
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