Camp site thieves are an insidious evil

Attention all campers, hikers, hunters, and all nature lovers, there is a new evil lurking in our beloved mountains of North Idaho! It watches and waits for us to leave our camps to hike, walk, hunt or stock up on supplies. If we didn’t see it we never would have believed it. If it hadn’t violated us we wouldn’t have even thought it could happen. But, alas, it did. An insidious evil beyond our comprehension — thieves.

Thieves breaking into camps and robbing unsuspecting campers while they are out enjoying the beautiful mountains. Thieves using tools brought with them to pry open RV doors and take whatever they could find of any value (Thieves taking our clothes too?  If they really needed them we would have given the clothes to them, they didn’t have to steal). In the 40 plus years we have hunted elk there was never any cause to worry (except maybe for bears) while we gone from our camps. Never.

There was an honor code amongst hunters, a mutual respect. It seems that is gone. It goes along with the total lack of respect we are experiencing in the mountains, not only from dirt bike riders using the trails in our little window of time of use ( Sept. 18th - November 3rd) to ATV riders disrespecting the locked gates and plowing through the terrain to get where they want to go. There is a reason those roads are gaited and it is against the law to be on them. The total arrogance of people who think that they are beyond the law is appalling.

I don’t know how or if these thieves will be caught or if we will ever recover what was stolen from us but the purpose of this letter is to inform the other folks who love and use the mountains properly of this malevolent activity and take precautions. Who would have thought this could happen here? Pity.

LEE SCHELL

Sandpoint