I went elk hunting in Montana awhile ago on a farm that my buddy and I met at a bar in a restaurant after eating dinner there. We where planning on hunting BLM land, but didn't know the area, so we asked the people at the bar if they had any recommendations on where to find the elk. One of the guys there said he was the John Deere Saleman for the area and one of his customers was complaining about all the elk on his farm eating his crops. He called him while we where all sitting there and the owner of the farm came to the bar and invited us to stay at his house and hunt on his place. We both shot nice 6x6 bulls in two days.
After I shot mine, he went to a neighbors farm, opened up the barn and borrowed his tractor to get my elk. It was a nice John Deere with a loader. He called his friend who owned the meat processing plant, and then he picked up my elk with the tractor and carried it to the road where the meat processor was waiting. He took it to town.
The next day my buddy shot his elk and when we went back to the owner of the farms barn to get his tractor, it was gone. He figured another neighbor had borrowed it, but he didn't know who, or seem to concerned. We drove to another neighbors place, got his tractor and did the same thing with the meat processor.
When we got back to his place, his tractor was sitting in the barn.
Every one of those tractors where big horsepower John Deere 4x4's with loaders. He also had a much bigger one that he farmed 3,000 acres with. We spent 3 days at his house, his wife cooked and fed us, he drove us around his land and took care of the elk without us doing anything but telling stories, laughing at his jokes and having fun finding elk. When it was all said and done, we asked what we owed him and he said not a thing. We each left a thousand dollars in the house as a tip, hoping to be able to come back again in the future. This was a limited draw area that is very hard to get an elk tag for. I sent a thank you note, and a Christmas card for several years after that, but never heard back from him. We never drew another tag and over the years stopped applying.
There are some great neighbors out there, and some pretty amazing people. If you have neighbors like that guy has, I can see it being a very good thing to be able to share and borrow from each other. There where no fences, and nobody locked their barns. They seemed to come and go into each others barns whenever they wanted, and used what they needed. It was really nice.
