Pragmatic Ginseng Security Secrets, Part II
I always tell people to put a perimeter fence around their land, and after that, to put another fence around their ginseng growing areas. What we don’t usually talk about is gates, and that’s because most people don’t put gates in the fences… because they don’t want people to use them.
It may come as a surprise to hear me tell you to carefully place a few gates in your fencelines. Even more shocking might be my recommendation that the gates not be locked unless the gate is across a road passable by a vehicle. A navigable road is a toss-up. In general I’d probably come down on the side of not putting a lock on the gate.
Here’s why: If you ever see war movies where the defenders are in their bunkers on the perimeter of a fortified compound, they are usually looking out at the wire in front of them. Lots of barbed wire, concertina wire and tanglefoot. If you’re like most people, you might have thought that the purpose of that wire was to slow down the attackers while giving the defenders time to shoot them. You’d only be partially right.
The real purpose of wire in a perimeter defense is not so much to stop them, but to channel the attackers into kill zones covered by your crew-served weapons: the machine guns and mortars. Once channelled into the killing zones, they can be dealt with efficiently.
Gates serve the same purpose on your perimeter and interior fences, and here’s how it works:
It is a basic fact of human nature that people are lazy. Given a choice, it is only the very unusual person who will choose the hard way when the easy way is available. If someone is going to sneak in and dig your ginseng, give them an easy way into and out of your farm with conveniently placed gates.
This has the effect of channeling your intruders into defined avenues of ingress and egress where they can be photographed and documented for later prosecution. Don't think that you can construct a Fort Knox and keep all intruders out. It isn't practical, and even if you attempted it, all it would do is to make people wonder what you were doing back there.
The pragmatic solution is to give them a way in, but one that you can use to your advantage.
Country people aren’t stupid, though. They’ll wonder why a gate is in any given place if they can’t see an obvious reason for having a gate there. Gates cost money, and putting up a gate when there's no reason for it might make them suspicious. With that in mind, we’ll just give them an obvious reason.
The place to put gates is on the natural deer trails and terrain features that allow easy passage to the wildlife. These locations tend to be located on natural avenues of travel, along general routes that someone walking cross-country would use. If you’re putting in a gate on a game trail, it makes perfect sense to build a shooting stand and plant a food plot right there by the gate. Then, if you leave the gate open a bit it allows the wildlife to pass unimpeded through the fenceline.
If you're a deer hunter, you already understand the value of what I'm talking about. Over time, a strategically placed gate will probably become a choke-point as game start adjusting their movements to take advantage of your passageway. Country people understand putting in some work to have good places to hunt deer and turkey, and won’t think twice about seeing a shooting stand covering a game trail on a property line.
As it just so happens, that shooting stand makes a convenient location for a hidden solar panel, battery bank and camera mount, which can be used to monitor the natural avenue of approach that your ginseng thief will use.
We’ll talk more about camera systems and intrusion detection systems, but this is the basic strategy: give the intruder an easy way in and they’ll take exactly the path you want them to. Since you can’t stop people from coming in and out of your land, the next best thing is to channel them into areas where they can be photographed and documented as they walk right past your large “NO TRESPASSING” sign.
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Real Estate Development
