Clear Boundaries

A landowner who was referred to me from another client, called me with interest in having their land selectively harvested. Though they were interested in a thinning, they were quite concerned that they didn’t know where their property lines were and “just know we’ll have to hire a surveyor to survey our lot”. The cost of a survey was obviously weighing on them, so I told them not to worry and just let me do some research and take a look first. I took an initial walk on the lot with a simple tax map to see what I could find for boundary evidence and to my luck I did find some old barbed wire fence and very faded blazes on some sections of the line.

Though there was some evidence, I needed more information to confirm what I saw and figure the other areas out. By researching the landowner’s deed, abutter deeds and by chance, finding a registered copy of a survey to one abutting lot at the registry of deeds, I now had bearings, distances, and a good survey map to put the pieces together. From this information I made a rough Arc map on my computer and headed out into the field to run the lines and confirm monuments written into the deeds and shown on the survey map. Several hours later all lines were run, corners marked using a GPS unit and all the info needed to make an accurate Arc map as well as be ready for a harvest was complete.

To say the least, this client was very happy and made good income from the harvest on their lot, rather than having to spend it on a survey. Not all lots wind up this way, but let us take a look and see for ourselves what’s out there for boundary line evidence. In the event that we can’t figure it out, we will gladly refer you to a trustworthy surveyor. The moral of the story is; have a forester brush out/blaze/paint your lines every ten years. By doing this you’ll likely save yourself many headaches in the future!