You Have A Friend

[woodman]

I was sitting in my kayak stopped on the gravel bar, Chief was kicked back in his seat with his canoe stopped on the gravel bar. Cricket and I think KC were walking and fishing from the gravel bar. And then this guy Prater walks up to the edge of the bank, which was up 6'-8' up from the gravel bar, and starts mouthing off a bunch of threats, like I warned you before or something etc. etc.(bunch of meaningless crap to me)

Chief just sittin back taken it all in like that guy was some pesky mosquito or something.... Wish I had a camera then....

[FishinCricket]

I was sitting in my kayak stopped on the gravel bar, Chief was kicked back in his seat with his canoe stopped on the gravel bar. Cricket and I think KC were walking and fishing from the gravel bar. And then this guy Prater walks up to the edge of the bank, which was up 6'-8' up from the gravel bar, and starts mouthing off a bunch of threats, like I warned you before or something etc. etc.(bunch of meaningless crap to me)

Chief just sittin back taken it all in like that guy was some pesky mosquito or something.... Wish I had a camera then....

I was very impressed with Chiefs calm, and I don't blame him a bit for paddling on downstream past Mr Praters land after the first confrontation, the guy was being an butt...

[Buzz]

Lets not forget that Chief had an ailing son in his canoe. If he was moving ahead it was to get Dylan home.

[Tim Smith]

Maybe I will never float or fish Shoal Creek, but this kind of thing concerns all of us.

...actually, I hear this is the PREMIER spot to fish in the entire Midwest. From here on, this place is at the top of my list for Missouri floats.

And I find it interesting to note, that the only times I've had this much trouble from a landowner was when they were doing something illegal that they didn't want found out.

Definitely making a trip...bringing sampling equipment too.

[jdmidwest]

And I find it interesting to note, that the only times I've had this much trouble from a landowner was when they were doing something illegal that they didn't want found out.

Normally, that is probably not an issue, except maybe in Carter County where the Sheriff just got arrested for Meth. Most druggie don't get the local law involved.

[Tim Smith]

Normally, that is probably not an issue, except maybe in Carter County where the Sheriff just got arrested for Meth. Most druggie don't get the local law involved.

That's just one flavor of illegal.

[flytyer57]

Normally, that is probably not an issue, except maybe in Carter County where the Sheriff just got arrested for Meth. Most druggie don't get the local law involved.

Unless, as in the case you pointed out, the local law enforcement is also in on the local meth business.

[Buzz]

He's really just an **** who has too much time on his hands and has the little king syndrome.

[troutfiend1985]

I'm kinda wondering about this "cool off period" that the sheriff wanted. As I understand it, it was you guys that kept your cool (unless there is more to the story), so why is it that you have to keep away from a public waterway? And can't go near it 'til October?? More I think about it, Chief, unless you have had some history with this guy Prater, I find it a little suspect that a warrant would come up over this one little incident. If not, and this one innocent little float trip was the ONLY incident, I'd say Chief, you got OWNED.

Kinda why I thought there might have been "the rest of the story".

The sheriff probably wanted a cool off period because Prater seems to have it in for Chief. A law enforcement agent isn't going to want to encourage a legal incident, especially one with an idiot in Prater who has a gun. I find it marvelously amusing that you people want to assume facts, make up stories and continuously pounder over issues that have no relevance to whether Chief was in his legal right here. Are you guys that bored? And does Chiefs personal relationship, or lack thereof, with Prater have a material effect on your life? Yet continue to ponder over it, I'm sure it adds to the dullness of your life.

Tim, I would be curious if there is something going on with prater that is less than legal on the land. It would seem that his actions are somewhat consistent to a person who is trying to hide something. Although, on the flip side he seems to be fine with other people besides Chief going through his land. Although, it seems that he is pretty intent on guarding his area of land, and I don't know if he figures that its the only stream in town or what. I would be really curious to find out what your samples say.

[Tim Smith]

Tim, I would be curious if there is something going on with prater that is less than legal on the land. It would seem that his actions are somewhat consistent to a person who is trying to hide something. Although, on the flip side he seems to be fine with other people besides Chief going through his land. Although, it seems that he is pretty intent on guarding his area of land, and I don't know if he figures that its the only stream in town or what. I would be really curious to find out what your samples say.

True story.

When I was working the sediment project in California, we found a stream (one of the few streams in that part of California) that still had coho in it. Our study site ran inside a large timber company's holdings and had a boundary with a local land owner.

As part of the study I had decided we needed to monitor terrestrial predation on the pools. We had trail cameras set up over the pools all over the watershed to quantify what predators were coming into the pools and how often. There was a large pool at the end of this particular study site that we knew had adult steelhead trapped in it. That particular pool was a bit of an outlier (adult fish don't normally stay in the watershed that late in the year), but we were curious what would happen there. We set up a trail cam on the creek channel (it was dry season and therefore safe) and watched it for a few weeks. You couldn't really see what was happening outside the creek channel in the photos but it was pointed upstream toward the pool that had a massive redwood growing immediately beside it (one of the really big ones with a diameter around 10' or more). Over time, we got some great shots of an otter catching an adult steelhead out of that pool. There were a few hiccups in the overall data set (the monitors seemed to be photographing fish below the surface of the water when they swam by, something we did not expect since it was a thermal sensor and the water surface should have prevented the monitor from detecting a temperature difference even if it existed) but we did find that predator visits were correlated with fish density in the pools...evidence that terrestrial predators could play a role in regulating juvenile salmonid populations (a hypothesis that would require further testing to explore).

Then one day when we were checking that particular camera, we met a timber agent. We mentioned the camera was there and asked him to be careful of it so that we didnt get false recordings (it was a non-digital camera with a limited number of exposures). It was a friendly encounter, but the next week we went back to check the trail monitor and it wasn't there. Came to find out that the land owner on the property adjoining the timber company decided the camera was on his land and he took it. It may be true that the camera was on his land, but if so, only by a few feet at most. There was no marker on the creek and the single marker on the road was a hundred yards away. By the GPS measurement we were on the line.

I contacted the landowner, explained that were were trying to get estimates of predation on adult fish and the overall parameters of the project. He responded with a long lecture about how environmental laws were preventing him from clearing the undergrowth to suppress forest fires like a responsible land owner and how he was going to call the sherrif on us for coming on his land. Since he had stolen state property it didn't seem he would have had a case even if were were a few feet over the line, but we decided not to press the matter since we needed to be able to sample safely in that area in the future (it was extremely remote site in a drug producing area and the overall stability of this guy looked pretty iffy).

So the project kept going, and one day a couple of months later we looked up and there where that huge redwood beside the pool had been standing now sat a pile of garbage and debris...hiding the stump. A redwood that size hardly qualifies as undergrowth. That tree was also well inside the easement for the river and the removal was a direct violation of state law. Large trees like that are a major reason coho are still able to live in places like California. Once they are removed, the stream banks destabilize and erode, water heats up, habitat is lost and salmonid populations suffer. The wood from that tree would have earned him tens of thousands of dollars so he was motivated enough, scared enough, and greedy enough to try to get us out of the way before he took it down.

I rarely, rarely catch flack from landowners. When I do, I remember this guy.

So maybe Chief's guy is just an butt, or maybe he's upset because he's dealing with a lot of tresspassing and he has decided to blame Chief, or maybe...

...he's doing something he knows he shouldn't do and the paranoia has caught up to him.

I doubt anything will crop up, but given his attitude I sure don't mind checking.