No public lands around here to speak of, though the state owns the 80 acres right behind me and is logging the 100 year old second growth right now (for all practical purposes, the state is just one more logging company, contracting with the same gypo loggers as the corporations). Those 80 acres are a remnant of a rare habitat in a land of 40 year monoculture, so-called, tree farms, almost all owned now by John Hancock (was Crown Zellerbach land before a British billionaire's leveraged takeover of Crown in the early '80s, followed by a long succession of transfers through many companies {including Campbell's Soup, of all things} playing financial games, avoiding taxes and hiding their wealth).
Anyway, starting from a few hundred feet in front of my cabin to many miles behind it, I represent the one person residing in hundreds of square miles. What else is a guy with PTSD to do? Like I told my VA shrink, I try to be a hermit, and I even screw that up.
All these lands were open to anyone until the early '90s when the then major owner, Willamette Industries, gated all the roads. They placed the gate on the nearby logging road right at this property's back corner, about 600 feet from where I sit. They put a nice wide spot in the road for the hunters to park their pickups and head out onto the land. I've learned to put my NO HUNTING signs at least 8 feet above the ground so they don't get stolen every year.
Every year, a couple of bulls come out of this dead end. That's for the hundreds of hunters from all over the state who come here to try and get their bull. They don't realize that our local herd stays, from year to year, at about twenty animals. The pressure on this little herd is intense. There is actually a hunting club that named themselves after our valley, and they are based three hours from here in the suburbs of Seattle.
After 38 years here, I've seen just about everything from these "sportsmen," much of it not very nice. I live at the end of a dead end road in a county without a traffic signal light. But nowhere is safe it seems.
I like to hunt, even though I've long been a vegetarian. I love to hunt the wonderful fall mushrooms of the coastal hills. Too bad it is hunting season.
