Court Opinion

ID: 9738249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:46:41.956461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:04.834145
License: Public Domain

DYKMAN, P.J.
¶ 44. (dissenting). I believe that the majority has made it impossible to adversely possess hunting land, which is characterized by an absence of fences and structures. Though the majority has stated that it must accept the trial court's findings, I believe that those findings require the conclusion that the plaintiffs occupied the disputed area for the required time, and that Dr. Easley did not take steps to prevent actions consistent only with ownership of the disputed area. The following findings from the trial court's opinion show this for me.
*481During all of those years, Daniels and his hunting parties, and Mr. Sheller, and Mr. Postler, among others, would have used guns during the gun deer season, and the discharge of those guns would have been readily audible to persons situated on the adjoining properties of Dr. Easley. They would have also discharged guns during the spring turkey season, as well as the fall grouse and turkey seasons. Almost all of the land owned by Dr. Easley on Exhibit 1 (in Government Lots 5, 6 and 7) would be within a half mile radius, or less, of the southern end of the disputed area. Certainly within that radius, the 19 hunters on the Easley property could have and should have heard the rifle and shotgun discharges of the plaintiff and his predecessors in interest and their invitees. Yet, not once before 2006, did Dr. Easley ever evict any trespasser or hunter from the disputed area.
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... While Dr. Easley and his group of 19 friends and relatives who hunted these properties demonstrated a tenacity of concern for exclusively possessing and using Dr. Easley's hunting land throughout the last half of the 1970's onward, such tenacity of concern was never demonstrated at all as to the disputed land until sometime in 2006. The contrast here is rather stunning. The very nature and extent of the anti-trespasser actions taken by Dr. Easley and his friends everywhere else on his property is in stark contrast to the total lack of any such actions on the disputed area.
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.. . When the highest and best use of the prime hunting land is for hunting, and where one party and his predecessors and invitees totally dominate that piece of land for 30 or more hunting seasons, then that is sufficient notice to everyone in the area, including the rightful owner. It is particularly true when the evidence of occupancy includes putting a road up to and *482through part of the disputed area, as well as clearing a path from the west edge of the oak island to the eastern lakeshore of Mud Lake. Where it also includes placing numerous permanent and portable deer stands throughout the area, as well as motion-sensitive cameras as well as hunters on foot and in stands, and gunshots and arrows flying with regularity during the deer season. I don't think it is humanly possible to occupy prime hunting space more than what the plaintiff and his predecessors have done.
¶ 45. There is much more supporting the trial court's conclusion in its forty-three page decision. I do not take issue with the law the majority cites. But I believe that the majority has re-weighed the evidence, focused on evidence it finds more persuasive than the evidence relied on by the trial court, and therefore is able to reach a conclusion contrary to that of the trial court. I did not view the witnesses, or the hunting land. The trial court did. I am unwilling to second guess the trial court's credibility determinations and fact finding. But, because the majority has held otherwise, I can only respectfully dissent.