THAT neighbor, part 4?

[patrickg]

Well it seems that the beat goes on... I have a fellow running cattle on my place with me (actually his dads) and in return he has been mending fences and doing some fencing. I got a call on my answering machine from my neighbor telling me the cattle got into his garden and destroyed it. This is Oklahoma in late August. (Hold that thought)
What garden? Maybe some okra but most stuff is toast now. Anyway my bud, Bob, goes over about dark last night and gets an earful about the destruction of the garden of Eden unprecedented in living memory or recorded history. So much work went into this pride and joy. Huge production, daily. The cows broke down the fence to get in and eat/trample it.

Bob noticed 5 t-posts broken off and collected the tops and put them in a pile. As it was getting dark he did no further investigating but listened to their sad tale. It was worth thousands if not millions and would have fed the multitides. The least they would accept would be a steer or two. He said that he had just butchered a beef and could maybe give them some but they wanted at least one steer.

This morning he went back for a look and MYSTERIOUSLY the 5 post parts had vanished without a trace. Odd that pieces of t-posts would vanish from a field at night behind the house of a guy with a BAD rep for shooting. The neighbor couldn't be hiding evidence could he? Anyway Bob comes to see me and he is not a happy camper. Bob is a nice guy, but hates to be lied to or manipulated. Seems the ends of the posts were broken off in different directions like someone wiggled them back and forth. Ever see a cow do that?

The posts had chunks missing, bullet holes in them, and various bullet related damages. See attachment. There are other posts still in the fence with bullet damage as well, just not broken off, yet.

I called the sheriff and a deputy came out ONCE AGAIN to take a report. Bob is musing over whether or not this was attempted fraud and or extortion. The neighbor obviously shot the posts and hid evidence, making himself look guilty. Bob is an experienced cattleman and says he has never seen posts destroyed by cattle in any fashioon remotely resembling this situation. Do cows bend posts back and forth over and over to break them and then hide the evidence? Maybe Bob and I are mistaken and the cows, being deficient in iron in their diet, chewed the holes in the fence. Maybe their was intervention on the part of space aliens.

Maybe the nieghbor's stock chasing dog will have an encounter with a space alien with a particle beam weapon, one particle beamed through his head. Bob is a nice guy but did I mention he doesn't like to be lied to and manipulated?

Patrick

 

[njrqs]

I know a lot of you guys seem to like, if not love your neighbours.

But as far as I am concerned, neighbours are only good for one thing.

That is helping pay for half of your fence.

But if you are my neighbour, so are so stingy you don't even do that.

Hence my next move won't be 6 acres, it will be 6,000,000 acres !!!

 

[Mrwurm]

Reminds me of a story. My friend, Bob, had a problem with his neighbors dog eating his garbage and generally making a mess. When confronted, the neighbor denied that his dog could ever possibly be involved in such a lowly crime. Bob said " Well if your sure it's not your dog, you won't mind if I shoot the garbage eating dog the next time I see it". Bob, never saw that dog at his place again.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

I'm sure the neighbor is the reason there's two r's in sorry. It's probably something genetic caused from when his ancestors initiated the black plague in Europe.

But what I see in the t posts in the picture appears to me to be pure t common corrosion.

You can walk down any old fence line with ground like we have in Texas and Oklahoma and find a fair percentage of the t posts corroded to heck and back.

Cows to rock t posts back and forth. It isn't something they do to break down the fence. It's something they do when they've got their head through the fence eating and decide a little has dropped on their side of the fence. They pull their heads back catching the wire and shaking the post.

About four months ago I had to re align a barbwire fence between two neighbors. The fence line had been up for fifteen years and went from one property corner to five feet in at the other end. I'd replaced two sides with pipe and cattlepanel fencing. It was then that I'd found the correct property pins. He didn't lose any property after I was done. But he didn't have that one corner that belonged to the neighbor on one side and he recovered the corner his other neighbor had use for the last fifteen years.

I started off with a big pile of t posts that had come from the three sides, two of which now had pipe fencing. And yet to do the side we were just correcting we still had to go buy some new posts because the old ones were corroded beyond use. We did find a few good old ones. But the bulk were bad. And a bunch of them were just like the ones in your picture.

BTW these posts I'm talking about were seniors and not juniors.

What surprises me about your story is how the failure of five posts could cause the fence failure. A properly installed and maintained barbwire fence should still be operational even with five t posts broken.

Now that the cows have found the garden you're going to have to do more than replace the posts to keep them in. I've watched a large beefmaster walk up to a five wire fence and literally walk through it without damaging it. Just stick the head and one front leg through and the rest follows. When the important equipment's time to pass through you will find your own drawing up, can't help it.

I'm not talking about the bull destroying the fence. Just climbing through it like you or me would. We knew he'd went through it and the only way we could find his spot was to wait and watch until he decided it was time to go back.

Around here they try to go with ten foot centers and two stays between posts. Of course what's funny about all this is two wires will work fine until they discover they can go through. Then you have to build a barrier or change out the herd.

I'm sure your neighbor is a jerk. All the more reason to make sure you have a good fence between his and yours. But I can't see evidence of the posts being shot in your picture, just corrosion. And the fence has to have been going south for some time so part of the fault has to be yours.

Something else to watch for on a wire fence is rust spots on a your posts. I don't know why unless it's the old thing about how attractive virgins are or something like it. But a tiny rust spot you have to search for to see will come up on a post. And it will attack that wire and failure will come sooner than later.

Field fence and barbwire are generally galvanealed. That's comparable to spraying WD40 for lube versus using lubriplate if you want to compare galvanealed to galvanized.

It will hold up for awhile. But if you have a nick, say like where you used your pliers to get that tie tight at the post, corrosion will set in and you will eventually have a failure.

I don't mean to sound so contrary. But I'd hate like heck for you to run to a lawyer expecting your righteous indignation to stand up in court. And you are in the country in Oklahoma so you do have to keep in mind who you're dealing with and just how far the family ties go.

 

[dmccarty]

Patrickg,

The one and only hole could be from a bullet but its tough
to tell. I would walk the fence line and see if you can find
bullet fragments. If he was shooting jacketed rounds,
especially handgun one, there are bound to be fragments
around the fence line. The jackets will be easier to see than
the lead but you might find the lead as well.

If the guy was shooting fence posts I would expect the
holes to be at the top if he was shooting at targets. Most
people, I know this guy ain't like most, want their targets
at least three or four feet off the ground. The only reason
I can think off that he would shoot a post near grade, besides
just being mean, would be something he propped up on the
post like a bottle or such.

Now if he was shooting at something on the ground there has
to be evidence all over the place. Its pretty hard to shoot a
fence post to cut it in have and not have holes all over the
place. Even if he was the Greatist Shot In The World its going
to take multiple rounds to really weaken the post. There
just has to be lead, jackets and holes. Hopefully there ain't
much grass around the fence line.

Got a metal detector?

Hope this helps,
Dan McCarty

 

[Ozarker]

The way to break a dog of getting into your trash is to pour a cup of ammonia into the trash bag before you close it up. About the second time he breaks into a bag and get a nose full of that, he'll stay away from trash bags.

 

[JoeR]

Most lead bullets will leave a little lead on the metal it hits, and will flare out one side of the metal. Unless he is using armor piercing bullets, then the hole will look like someone used a drill.

Look on the other side of the t-post and see if the metal is flared...


Joe

 

[Egon]

Patrick:
Sounds intriquing. Are the butt ends of the broken T posts still in the ground? Have you tried to bend some other posts back and forth to see if they will break off.

Now if'n you want to appear like the good neighbour maybe find an old dairy cow, perferably Holstien or an old very large bull who is destined for the packers and deliver it live to the neighbour as compensation. The old bull would be best as they can be cantakerous fellows exspecially if you have some prize purebred cows on your side of the fence. Doing this could really get interesting.

Egon

 

[patrickg]

wroughtn_harv, Yeah, I know about the everyone is related to everyone aspect. I apologize for my poor pix. On looking at them and not recalling the "real thing" I can see how you might think differently than the deputy sheriff that took his own pictures and is going directly to the DA to try to get something done. This deputy sheriff is a cattle man also and has been around stock all his life.

The guy whose cows are involved is a long time rancher and is very experienced in the damage cattle do and has seen his share of bullet damage to t-posts. He and his hired help who removed the damaged t-posts from the ground think it is definitely gunfire and they were unaware that this same neighbor had shot down an 18" plus diameter Hackberry tree no more than a year ago so they weren't predjudiced. In fact, to curry favor with the new folks, my neighbors gave some of the cattle owner's hired hands handouts from their garden last month. These hands are not too impressed with my neighbor's "good naturedness" now.

See attached picture: Note the spalling. Even when the bullet knocks a LARGE cookie bite shaped piece of material off the edges of the "hole" show spalling which indicates the direction of the round (like a BB knocking a cone of glass out of a window).

Patrick

 

[patrickg]

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