Club Rules Concerning Guests

we don't allow guest other than family members, and no coon or rabbit hunting, If they wanna coon or rabbit hunt they can go elsewhere. Theres tons of public land for that

Change the situation a little. Say it's your land and you allowed a friend to hunt squirrels on it outside of deer season. Then one night he shows up with a bunch of coon hunters without asking. How would you feel? Would it make any difference if the man said, "they ain't hurting anything. They getting rid of coons on your land" or would you take the position that it is my land and I get to say who hunts on it? I can understand how folks might feel about the member bringing coonhunters into the club. It's all about having clearly defined rules known in advance and not changing them on the fly without the input of members if that is how the club rules are changed. Maybe they wouldn't complain if they were asked. No one likes to feel they've been taken advantage of, especially those that have to pay to hunt the same land and the lease is year round and not just limited to deer season.

The member in question should have cleared the coon hunt with you first, since you run the club. You in turn should run it past the other members if you feel its warranted. For him to do something like that without notifying anyone ahead of time is not cool in my opinion. I ran our club for over 20yrs and anything out of the ordinary was run past me and I in turn ran it past the other members first before it was done. Worked for us.

transfixer said:

The member in question should have cleared the coon hunt with you first, since you run the club. You in turn should run it past the other members if you feel its warranted. For him to do something like that without notifying anyone ahead of time is not cool in my opinion. I ran our club for over 20yrs and anything out of the ordinary was run past me and I in turn ran it past the other members first before it was done. Worked for us.

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That's kind of the way I was thinking. Whenever any discussion has come up regarding creating "rules", it's been due to something he's done. It's probably time to part ways.

Stumbled upon this thread.
Our club doesn't have any written rules, YET. We are also a small club with 8 members and we have one guy who in the last 2-3 years has began doing similar with guests. There's been no proof and he won't admit to it when confronted, but a few of us suspect he is letting guests hunt/fish while not being present himself. I personally suspect that he has given his stepdad and one of his buddies a key to the gate so they can fish and turkey hunt. We have a nice pond on our lease and nobody really turkey hunts, so there's not a lot of traffic there in the Spring.

It's not the hunting and fishing that bother us. It's the fact that strange people are visiting our club where at any given time there may be ATVs, grills, boats, etc. on sight. When there's no control of guests, things start going missing, hunting usually declines, feelings are hurt, people start to grumble, etc. And given enough time, the guests will start bringing guests, which may already be happening to us. I've seen this happen too many times in past clubs.
It's best to cut him loose. That's what I'm about to do with our problem guy. There always seems to be that one guy that causes friction.

There is also the aspect of the liability insurance just about all clubs have to pay for nowadays, I know the wording on ours has changed in recent years, we are supposed to notify the property owner of any guests prior to the guest coming on the property, if we don't , and something happens, its on us, not the property owner, and not the insurance co. We've never had anything happen to warrant a claim the whole time we've had the lease, but you never know in this day and time.
So worst case scenario one of the people that your member brings to the land, or allows access to the land without him there, either to fish, coon hunt, turkey hunt , whatever, if they were injured or hurt, could file a claim against the club, depending on how your policy reads.

The law of Georgia premises liability and against whom a claim may be filed are not controlled by terms of an insurance policy. An insurance policy controls whether or not the insurance company pays a claim or not, but just as important, governs the costs of defense--attorneys fees. Premises liability for a social, not a paying, guest is a high hurdle for a plaintiff to overcome. However, an insurance company can avoid providing a defense, even for a frivolous claim, if the terms of coverage aren't followed by insureds. It's best to have your policy reviewed by a civil attorney to understand obligations of coverage by insureds.

matrok said:

Just wanting some opinions on club rules about guests. We have a no guest policy during deer season, but allow guests(2 or 3) when the season ends to shoot hogs and coyotes. Recently, one of our members brought a pretty large group to coon hunt and some of the members are not happy about it, stating they didn't pay dues to allow folks to come and hunt for free. I'm the president of the club and we've always had "gentlemens rules"(not written). Never had an issue until now. I do have the required insurance, as per the timber company, and I need to look over the policy to see if there's any liability for anyone not listed. Wondering what other clubs rules are concerning this.

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your Club needs a New president

matrok said:

Just wanting some opinions on club rules about guests. We have a no guest policy during deer season, but allow guests(2 or 3) when the season ends to shoot hogs and coyotes. Recently, one of our members brought a pretty large group to coon hunt and some of the members are not happy about it, stating they didn't pay dues to allow folks to come and hunt for free. I'm the president of the club and we've always had "gentlemens rules"(not written). Never had an issue until now. I do have the required insurance, as per the timber company, and I need to look over the policy to see if there's any liability for anyone not listed. Wondering what other clubs rules are concerning this.

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You need to look over your lease.We have leased from several timber companies and all require a list of anyone that can be on property. You have to send in a list before anyone not listed on the lease comes on the land. We had a neighbor that lost their lease because of this.