Oilfield poaching

It occurred to me that we have several members that are employed in one way or another in the oilfield. I'm proud to say I've hunted with a couple. I respect y'all tremendously and know you do a job I'd probably wimp out in 2, maybe 3 days. Ok, 1. Having hunted a large, old oil-play ranch out in far west Texas a couple of times, I can't help but wonder - how much poaching actually goes on? I know most ranches have a no firearms in the truck rule, but the boys I've seen (hunting compadres excepted) don't exactly look like saints. What's the skinny?

It happens but most I have met wouldn't risk their job for a deer. I know of a few that were poached by oil/gas field workers. Problem is, they don't always know who is in the woods or on the ridges watching.

Ive never done it and dont know anyone that has. I like my job(money) way to much.

Plus if your caught you lose your job, your rifle, some money(fines), and most likely the respect of fellow workers. We make enough to pay for a lease. And thats what i do if I want to hunt.

We have been known to set up targets and do some shooting but thats about it.


Weve been on some high fence ranches and most didnt care we had rifles in our truck.

I know of a ranch west of San Angelo that allowed the guns in the truck and encouraged the workers to shoot every varmint on sight.

When we were on the border working any gun was allowed.

As it should be.

When I worked pipeline, I wouldn't dare fire any rounds out there. Like said, you never know who's watching.

We were all standing around talking one day and the company man walked up. He asked us who has a gun in their truck. We all looked at each other waiting for someone to admit they had one. Then he said if you dont have one you might want to get one. A few guys had been beaten and robbed a week before we got there. I had my SBR and a pistol in my truck already.

We have alot of time we talk to the land owners. They want to know what the well is making. And we have the info. And they are pretty cool about letting you fish or target shoot on their land. Alot of them dont mind you hog hunting.

It still happens but not by that Oilfield person. He tells his buddies the info they need and when is the best times to go. Back in the 90's I had a friend with a ranch outside of San Angelo that had 5 mature bucks killed in a food plot one night with a spotlight. He knew they were mature by body size(they only cut off the heads) and after a while knew which bucks they were. The plots was well inside a 10k ranch and had an oil field road beside it with drilling going on the place. He had an on going battle with oilfield workers and their local buddies poaching bucks. He had a camera installed on his gate that he could watch every vehicle entering and leaving. Had the O&G people put a guard on the gate 24/7 to have everyone sign in and random vehicle checks after he lost those 5 bucks for years after it.

Its a trust issue with most of them. We were working on 5-10 well pads so you got to know everyone pretty well. Most of the ole timers would bring us lunch on sundays. I miss those pads.

It used to be that you would hear about poaching every so often, but in the last 15 years there hasn't been many stories surfacing. Not sure if poaching is down or everyone is being extra quiet. I would suspect the new technology of good game cameras may have a lot to do with the drop in "stories".

The ranch I hunted was a convoluted family and one ruling branch blew off the hunting. 'Guy from the local town (if you can call it that) was put "in charge". My friend represented another branch of the family. Somebody died and my friend became in charge. He wrote "it's over" letters and there were death threats for a few years afterwards. You bet I wore a pistol on every step of that place. All this to say, I understand "the buddies" situation.

I can't imagine we looked like saints, either.

Like was said, most guys don't risk their jobs for it. It would be hard for us to do it out here, anyway. Some of the production guys, like pumpers, could do it a lot easier, but I've never known any that did.

I wish I would have met a few land owners. I was just a foreman. The super usually kept them away from us, or kept us away from them.

Only Mudshark would not poach....He is our spiritual leader

This^^^^^^ If we get caught with a firearm, ammo, drugs, or alcohol we can (and most likely) will be fired....much less poaching! Not worth loosing my job over.

We put a camera up on our lease on the main entrance road to catch vehicles coming an going. We also put a stand and feeder just inside that gate with a camera watching the stand and one watching the feeder. We caught 4 different guys poaching. They all said the same thing, since there was no gate they thought it was ok. The reason there was no gate is because there company requested a cattle guard be installed instead, and the land owner agreed to that. Those 5 have been fired and the O&G company paid a hefty fine

Pumpjacks...Big Lake

In all fairness, that was many a moon ago. We had permission, and my buddy's brother was, and still is a judge out there. It's my favorite way to hunt deer. I fall asleep in a stand.

Every pumpjack out there carried a rifle in those white trucks. It was considered a perk.

Back in the 80's I worked in the oil patch from Bryan to Giddings and surrounding area. When I was first hired, I was a helper on a wireline truck. All the operators for this company had no regard for property rights or game laws. They ALL poached everything. From deer and ducks to bass ponds. Many times our wireline jobs would have us hooked up to the well from a few hours to a few days. Most times we were the only ones on site. My operator would leave me working while he and his buddies would go off spotlighting.

I was most emphatically told if I ever opened my mouth, they'd hurt me bad.

When there were issues, the regular oilfield workers always got the blame. Heck, I not sure anyone ever really knew where we were and what we were doing. We had a rotation of wells that we cut parrafin on and was always done off hours, usually during the night.

There are a couple wells on the farm up in Wyoming. We've never caught any of them poaching but I did have to get into a heated argument with one of the workers who was fishing on the place. I've caught him a couple times. Can fishing without permission technically be called poaching?

Dang skippy.

Not exactly oilfield but similar. When we sold our ranch a few years ago the survey crew was out there for a week or more in mid-november before the sale. We found their unattended truck parked near the front gate one day when we got out to the ranch, and they had an obvious deer hunting rifle laying across the back seat in clear view. My dad decided that it wasn't worth saying anything that might hold-up the closing date and we were going to sale the place in a few weeks anyways. I've always wondered how many deer those guys have shot while surveying ranches across the hill country, it could add up to quite a few.

Majors probably keep a better hand on the situation. Small operators, especially stripper well companies, are a different story. Caught one work-over crew corning a road.

definitely trespassing

They drilled a well on my neighbor close to my fenceline. The crew had a heyday fishing my adjacent bass tank. They kept a lookout in the crow's nest.

After they got the rig up on the adjacent property to our place in nacogdoches we heard gun shots every evening about 30 mins after the rig work lights came on.

did i ever tell ya's whin. twas hunten with me uncle named Jeb. we twas poor mountan ears, struglen ta keep de family fed. den one day, we bees chooten at some uncle Jed t Edit: ing with android. uncle Jeb twas a poor chot. up from de ground kums a bubblen crude. tea. uncle Jeb hit under ground oil line. yagh, uncle Jeb, moved ta de Hollywoods, yoke twas on me. dey gots me for poachen an egg. tis on puroll. dang Gov. been spying on me ever since dang android went bollistic didnt hit post yet i got cheap posts

this happens pretty often. no one will admit it, but it does happen. on my old family place, we had gas wells and we had issues.
we contacted the company and told them what was going on. no one did anything.
we then elevated to an "officer" with the company and then it stopped.

yagh, Jeb hit de bigtimes, came movie star, dey took me before de Judge, pleed de 5th, he took away me bottle, cut de loop-holes on me britches, had ta gain 50# , ya drops a bar of tis like a around uranis. tis enough ta scare person straight. yagh, the biggest fool ta never hit the big time i got cheap posts

The biggest mule deer I ever saw was poached in the late 80's by a pumper in the Sandhills. It was a huge deer with turned up hooves, a rack that fit around my shoulders and mass bigger than my forearms with many non-typical points. I'm not sure what lease he came off. I guessed somewhere near Andrews. That's the only place I've seen deer close to that size and it was illeagal to hunt that county at the time. Companies have stricter policies now but I'm sure this sort of thing still happens quite frequently.

It drives me crazy. What made our situation even worse is that the guy was taking his grandkids out there to fish on the place too. I love it and encourage anyone to take their kids and grandkids out hunting and fishin but teaching them that it is okay to trespass and poach is terrible.

In 2013 my current employer was able to take over several more wells due to poaching. This was in the Big Lake area. We mostly haul salt water. The previous trucking company had drivers either running over or shooting deer, quartering the deer on the lease road, and hauling out the meat in a cooler they carried on their trucks. Idiots left the carcass either on or next to the lease road.

Another related situation occurred here in the northern Barnett. A tank truck driver for another company hit a deer, stopped, loaded it on his hose tray, and carried it on for the night. He was a night shift driver. When he unloaded salt water at our disposal, one of our attendants spotted the deer and called the warden. The warden was waiting on him when he returned to his company's yard...deer still strapped on the hose tray. That was also in 2013.

In regards to the above comments about working on the border:
I was working for a frac fuel company at the time. We were doing a day frac about 10 miles east of Laredo. Daylight fracing hours on this well were 9am-3pm. All crews were instructed to enter and exit in daylight only, no firearms allowed.

That's great. Good old granddad is teaching his grandchildren the love of the outdoors and how to be criminals. What a thug.

In 4 years of owning land with oil wells in Oklahoma, I have only had one worker fire a shot on my place (that I know of). He shot a cardinal off my feeder leg with a 22. I saw him do it and confronted him. We had a heart to heart and I chose not to report him. He would have been fired on the spot as they are not allowed to have any guns in their trucks. So far, I have not regretted my decision.

In Kansas, where I am from in far SE Ks, they are very strict about no guns in the truck. In over 40 years we have never had an issue. Those jobs pay about twice the average in our area and they just don't want to lose that job.

Had an entire lease poached once. Spent 5 years doing strict game management. Doubled the deer herd and was finally producing trophy bucks in my last year. Oil crew told there headman about all the quality bucks they saw and the next year I was out of a lease. They offered the owner twice what I was paying and 3 years in advance. Still bitter to this day.

My family had that happen when I went off to college. Not any oil activity, but Capital Aggregates (Zachry) offered double what we were paying and 3 years in advance to have it as their "B" lease. They messed it up so much and hacked the owner off so bad we got it back. They'd put a bathroom on the cabin and run water lines to it. I'm not on it any longer, but my brother still is, over 25 years later.

'Hope you find a lease that makes you forget all about it.