Recently I began working on a project in a very remote and rural area about one hour from Dickinson.  The project that I am working on, occupies about 30 acres of land.

The project that I am working on, is not completely fenced in.  There are other types of operations occurring on adjacent land, that are loosely related to this project, which makes a continuous fence impractical.  There are “No Hunting” signs posted on fence posts, and at the entrances to the site, but there are not enough of these signs.

The project owners, and we workers, don’t want hunting on the project property because we don’t want the equipment to get shot, and we don’t want to get shot.  But this is an ongoing problem.

All kinds of animals have learned and figured out, that hunting is not supposed to take place on this 30 acre work site.  In my 48 years of living in Florida, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Idaho, and North Dakota, I had seen a fox approximately two to three times.  However in the past three days, I have seen a red fox on this work site a couple of times each day, and I see him for a minute at a time.

Also during the past three days, about twelve deer have come to the work site to hide amongst the equipment so that they won’t be shot.  There are other animals trying to hide on the work site, which I haven’t been able to identify yet because I get such a brief glimpse of them.

I drive the work vehicle slowly in order to not frighten the foxes and the deer.  They somewhat recognize the work vehicle and me, they watch to see what I am doing, and they only move away a little bit.  They don’t want to leave the work site.

The reason why the animals are here, is because pheasant hunting season began on October 7.  All of the pheasant hunters walking through the fields and shooting, has caused the animals to flee.

Though there are hundreds and hundreds of miles of grassland in every direction in western North Dakota, hunters keep showing up on the roads adjacent to this work site.  The hunters begin by making an effort to hunt on the adjacent land, but in the both the distant and the recent past, the hunters “accidentally” end up on the work site property, which is posted “No Hunting”.