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Comment by drewnick | Hacker News Reader

New Hampshire also has a pretty unique culture regarding hunting on others' and public land:

"Based on long-standing tradition, nearly all lands in the state of New Hampshire are open to hunting. The "rule of thumb" in New Hampshire is: all state, federal, municipal, county and private land is open to hunting unless it is posted against hunting."

http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/hunting/where-hunt.html

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This was the default rule for most of the frontier states. The east coast states (early states) adopted a default rule of no trespassing while the frontier states had such huge expanses of land privately owned that no trespassing as the default was impractical. Instead, the default was trespassing was allowed unless otherwise posted (hence the plethora of no trespassing signs in the Western states).

Not sure if this is how it works in NH. But, IMHO private land owners should pay more taxes for their land if they post against roaming. Or the reverse, pay less land taxes if they allow roaming.

Yeah, there could be a good idea there! Things have to happen at the cultural level too, but I'm all for experiments!

That is already the case in NH.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_use

I know that it is the same in Maine (or it was), and I believe Vermont. It's generally considered common courtesy to get permission from the landowner first.

It's one of those situations where a few yahoos can ruin it for everybody else. Or on the other hand, the influx of people "from away" who are ignorant of or opposed to the mostly unspoken way of doing things.

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