I am going to make a suggestion that has worked well for us.
Wildlife Cameras- get one.
While our situation is different, we had someone steal from us and caught it on camera.
We live on a farm, we grow Christmas trees, pecans, eggs, and a few other things.
Our farm is not open to the public.
First, we did not even realize at that someone had stolen from us.
This person (a neighbor- a nice family man who owns around 1,000 acres of land and former state police officer and pillar of our small rural community
)
drove into one of our fields with a friend, walked to the middle of the field, and cut down a tree, threw it in his truck and then left with it.
We would not have known of his "visit" had it not been for the Wildlife Cameras (motion-activated still-digital photography ) that we station around our farm to provide us a record of activity when we are not present. (We both work full time off the farm in addition to working our farm.)
We had photos of his truck coming and going into a restricted area- license plate number, what they were wearing, the tree in the back- the whole thing.
Then, the friend he had with him began working with my husband and told him that he had been out to "your beautiful place" and seen it-
and had gotten a Christmas tree in the bargain- but he thought they had cut it off our neighbor's land- not ours.
(yeah, 200 yards
inside our property line
What can I say, people are stupid.
Let me say that the 'perp' in this situation has been a good neighbor for 15 years,
and this is not the first time he's cut a tree off us while he thought nobody was looking.
I personally saw him do it about 10 years ago when he didn't know I was watching, and he didn't know that we had purchased the land he was poaching on and let it slide then.
It is surprising what good folk will do when they think nobody is looking, so theft isn't necessarily the action of drug dealers and addicts alone.
We chose not to pursue the matter any further, other than a nice neighborly chat about how his visit in his red truck with his friend was caught by our wildlife camera.
Hey, if Mr. Wealthy Landowner is that desperate for a free Christmas tree, than he is more desperate than I am and he can keep what he took this time.
I want a good relationship with all my neighbors, but mark my words- this
will not happen again.
So now, not only do we have multiple Wildlife Cameras around our property- well disguised- we also have
posted signage that tells people the area is under surveillance 24 hours a day- with big red eyeballs on the sign.
And that has done a lot to deter nee'r-do-wells and nice neighbors that might steal from us. They never know where or when they are being watched on our property.
I've seen curious people drive down our 1/2 mile driveway, looking for stray hunting dogs or some such thing (who knows- they could be casing the place) , see the signs, and literally turn right around and leave.
And if someone does come out and manage to abscond with something, we'll have water-tight evidence as to who it was and when they did it.
And we will be prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law ~