When you own a large piece of land, it is hard to get people to stay off of it

As long as they are respectful, it usually isn’t a big deal.

When they’re not, and they won’t leave when you ask, sometimes you don’t have much of a choice about what happens next.

Read more and find out what happened when this guy had to call in the police.

AITA for not letting my neighbours camp on my land?

I own sixteen acres of woodland behind my House.

It is very clearly my property as there are signs up stating it is private property.

As long as they aren’t bothering anyone.

I’m generally good with people walking through it taking their dog on a walk or hiking or even local kids playing there as it’s a safe place and beautiful.

So long as they don’t cause any damage or mess with the trees I see no reason to get upset over this.

An issue came up, however, tonight when I was on a walk and I saw a fire through the trees I admit I panicked, thinking a dog walker had been out and tossed a cigarette or some local teenagers were setting fires for fun.

Oh, I would be mad!

I rushed out to check on it and try to put out the fire and found one of my neighbours camping with their girlfriend and friends.

It was a group of five people in their mid 20s and they had a roaring campfire going.

They got startled by me rushing up to them like that and asked me what I was doing.

I asked them the same question back and told them they couldn’t camp here and they’d not asked permission to do so.

This led to some laughter and protests that they weren’t doing any harm and to “Lighten up.”

I told them to put the fire out and get off my land.

I didn’t want to risk a campfire there as it could easily get out of hand, especially when the group manning it were more than a little drunk.

Wow, very bold of them.

They ended up refusing stating they weren’t going anywhere and were not doing anything wrong, so I went home and called the police to get them off my property.

They were made to leave and break up their camp.

Am I maybe the AH for this?

They probably thought it was ok as i’m good with letting people use my land in general.

I maybe could have handled it better but i’d gotten a fright seeing the fire and then how they responded.

It just really got to me.

AITA?

I would have made them leave as well.

Let’s take a look at some of the comments and see what they have to say.

It might be time for a fence.

I agree, he could have pressed charges.

This guy makes a good point.

Yeah, this was very dangerous.

They were definitely causing damage to the property.

The nerve of these kids!

They got exactly what they deserved.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.