Uninviting access

I will admit that I generally do not sell products.  That said, I make a point of having access to my property as Uninviting as I reasonably can. I start with the benefit that the easiest route involves a drive through a cemetery. Then there is my relatively long and curving driveway that is arched with various trees and bushes making it a pretty dark drive.  I have been told by invited guests that they experienced fear in approaching my house.  Once arriving, they were amazed too find a pretty boring 1970s ranch.  

The benefit, of course, is that I do not have too many uninvited guests.  … and that is my objective.   I am curious.  How many others seek to discourage  uninvited guests, and how do you do it?

tall fence and two big, angry, dogs that tend to foam at the mouth work just fine most of the time. One can jump 2 meters from a sit. (the fence is 1.8 m.)

4 cameras in the front of my house from various angles take care of the rest.
I live in a place where we need to have bars on the windows. I don't fool around.


(Dr Redhawk had a lovely line in his signature about this-- i don't remember it verbatim but it was like "of course we love visitors, that's why we live so far away from other people!")

edited to add: going from one to two scary dogs made a massive difference in the number of people selling things. I used to get them constantly (selling everything from homemade bread and sweets to cleaning stuff, watermelons, furniture, scams.....). Now nobody even bothers.
There is a church down the road that proselytizes (not sure exactly what they are, there's no sign), they harass my neighbors every Saturday but literally run past my house. Cross the street to the other side if I'm walking the dog (then again, maybe it's my tattoos and friendly attitude!!!).
There is also a Mormon training center in our neighborhood, and their behavior is similar. I think they encourage people to stay far away from dogs to avoid potential bites.

When it comes to dis-inviting access, a latched gate with big dogs standing behind it is remarkably effective. That was the deal with my old place -- and the dogs were big marshmallows, but protective of their space.

Anything else that keeps people from driving in and "sniffing around / window shopping" also helps. If they can't see a quick getaway route, they'll move on. Likewise, if they have to get out of their vehicle and walk a little ways to a building, they are vulnerable and they know it.

My current place is accidentally quite good for this -- a steep driveway on a hill, where it's obvious you have to back up around a curve to get out. Not an inviting prospect if some crazy farm boy comes roaring out the front door.

Yes, a few years back I fenced in my back yard with a 6 ft solid wood fence with a beware of dog sign. My house sits an an angle, so visitors approach from a rear corner.   Although it was not my intention, it has the appearance of a fortified enclave.

We have a locked gate though somehow I have encountered a couple of people.  I assumed one might have climbed over the fence seeking help when his vehicle would not start.

I have a lot of clusters of trees so the house is not really visible from the road and it is set on the back part of the property.

It is unlikely that many people would make the long drive. If they were uninvited they might find that they made a very long drive only to be disappointed.

We are on 29+ heavily wooded acres on rocky ravines & ridges, so it's a super difficult (not to mention crazy-expensive) undertaking, to fence in. But, the problem is the solution - the gravel driveway is easy to miss, even for folks who know where we are, gps typically takes everyone nearly half a mile or so past our place, the gravel driveway starts level-ish, then curves and drops into a steep hill, to curve around and down to the house, that is all but invisible from the road (in no small part due to its inherent camouflage, in being a log home, in the woods), in summer, and only visible in other seasons if you know when & where to look. We also have a bare minimum locking gate that we (very) occasionally think to lock. In fact, we're more likely to lock it in bad weather, when the driveway has been (or is being) washed out, or frozen over, for the safety of anyone who might try to come down it, for their safety and ours. We don't want anyone stranded here with us (except family or good friends, which has happened), or to have to deal with their vehicles getting stuck, or sliding down through our propane tank, down the steep hill, and (not likely, but not impossibly) into the pond.

Being nondescript, the uninteresting "grey man," is often touted as a passive security measure.

A showy, manicured estate with expensive vehicles in the driveway looks pretty promising for a smash-and-grab artist. My unkempt driveway with 10 year old vehicles doesn't scream "money" at all. (However, not so unkempt that it screams "drugs!" )

I currently have signs that say "livestock guard dogs on duty" and "do not leave vehicle without escort".  "Rabid dog quarantine area - do not approach" is another good one, as is "chemical testing area".

John F Dean wrote:I will admit that I generally do not sell products.  That said, I make a point of having access to my property as Uninviting as I reasonably can. I start with the benefit that the easiest route involves a drive through a cemetery. Then there is my relatively long and curving driveway that is arched with various trees and bushes making it a pretty dark drive.  I have been told by invited guests that they experienced fear in approaching my house.  Once arriving, they were amazed too find a pretty boring 1970s ranch.  

The benefit, of course, is that I do not have too many uninvited guests.  … and that is my objective.   I am curious.  How many others seek to discourage  uninvited guests, and how do you do it?

Some put skulls  out.      Some put out gun targets full o holes around the bullseye.      Some signs are effective.

As sign that says, "beware of pet skunk"     could be most effective  especially if you got a  a jar of "essense: of skunk"  and put out a could dabs on your front porch...

Introverts unite ;-)  lol

But  I also encourage tall foliage to grow up all around my property,   out of sight, out of mind, or from a theif's perspective it might be a great place to steal from because no one see's it,    thus putting up some fake cameras could slow people down, but you have to not blab to the world those are fake cameras.....

Mart Hale wrote:... thus putting up some fake cameras could slow people down, but you have to not blab to the world those are fake cameras.....

I forgot to mention the trail cams we have all over the place - not fake, because we hunt.

I always liked these signs... just match the silhouette to what you have, for greater effect. A mix of warning and humor.

Put some animal skulls on fence post with arrows holding them up.
A cattle guard in the driveway
Carful with sings about dogs because you might be admitting you know the dog is dangerous in a legal battle.
No Turn Around sign

I am lucky to live on a rural dirt road where everyone is always outside chainsawing, chasing their dogs around and randomly shooting off their firearms. I have the opposite problem, I am always looking for packages the delivery driver seemingly threw out his window while hauling ass past my driveway hahaha.

But for real, not that all that isn't pretty much true, living on a one dead end road where we al know each other really makes me feel like my home is safe. No one has any "survivors will be shot again" signs but I feel like the vibe is there!

Dan Fish wrote:I am lucky to live on a rural dirt road where everyone is always outside chainsawing, chasing their dogs around and randomly shooting off their firearms....
But for real, not that all that isn't pretty much true, living on a one dead end road where we al know each other really makes me feel like my home is safe. No one has any "survivors will be shot again" signs but I feel like the vibe is there!

I wasn't even thinking about all these attributes - but they all apply in our case, too. Our road is gravel and maintained by a small few of us residents, so the further one dares to go, the worse the road gets, until a mile or so down past us, it goes through a creek, and up a hill, where it gets even worse, lol.

I'm a pretty big "gun guy" but I shy away from gun signs because it's a good way to advertise "HEY IF YOU BREAK IN HERE YOU CAN PROBABLY GET SOME GUNS!!!" and all the catchy ones about having an AR and a backhoe seem like the kind of thing I would not want in a courtroom if I ever had to use lethal force.

Our driveway is about 800' long, we put 3 different 5/8" cables across it, each about 100' apart from each other so you'd need to defeat one, advance, defeat another, advance, defeat a final. It's noisy to run an angle grinder and you're either walking all that distance exposed or driving, getting out, getting back in, etc. Or I guess you could just floor it and hope for the best lol but it's pretty deep hardware.

A simple "No Trespassing" sign and a the first cable being pretty close to the county road seems sufficient.

Tony Hawkins wrote:I'm a pretty big "gun guy" but I shy away from gun signs because it's a good way to advertise "HEY IF YOU BREAK IN HERE YOU CAN PROBABLY GET SOME GUNS!!!"

+1. All that macho crapola just signals that you are a high value target.

Would a we-trust-you vegetable stand at the gate be a theft deterrent? I wonder. I think I like the psyops. Always be two chess moves ahead of your opponent.

Our farm is fully fenced and gated (locked), but we still had to run double strands of barbed wire atop the field fencing in order to keep people from climbing over the fence. And that effort didn’t completely work either. The next step was to have signs made stating "Loose livestock and dogs can be dangerous. Farms are dangerous. Keep out." We posted them along the street plus on places where people had jumped the fencing in the past. We installed trail cams at the two gates just so we could identify any trespassers opening the gates. But since the signage went up, much of the problem has gone away.

Signage in general has been a concern to me.  To me, it announces that someone lives here. Now, that can be seen as good; because people will be less inclined to snoop around. But, it might be an invitation to others.

I've been thinking of putting up a sign "Never mind the dog, beware of the human". I don't have a car and my track is so overgrown, even with young trees, that vehicles can't get up here easily. The main track is a public foot path, but my house is down a branch where you have to duck quite low to get under tree branches to enter the track. Keeps all but the most curious/determined out.
A friend of mine collects sheep carcasses from a neighbour's field when they die of natural causes. He hangs them from a branch over the narrow footpath to his cabin for maggots to strip the carcass. He does it to collect the bones which he incinerates for bone meal. No doubt, it keeps out a lot of people. If you had chicken, you could stack even more uses for that practice - free, easy food for them. Especially useful in areas where you can't keep soldier flies.

Carla Burke wrote:

Mart Hale wrote:... thus putting up some fake cameras could slow people down, but you have to not blab to the world those are fake cameras.....

I forgot to mention the trail cams we have all over the place - not fake, because we hunt.

One tactic I saw used to hide cameras was to take an orange  tennis ball and put it up into a tree on the other side of where your cameras are.      People who pass thru put all their attention on  trying to figure out what that orange thing is up in the tree and pay no attention to the camera that is filming them.

There are many ways to divert attention.

I wasn't even thinking about all these attributes - but they all apply in our case, too. Our road is gravel and maintained by a small few of us residents, so the further one dares to go, the worse the road gets, until a mile or so down past us, it goes through a creek, and up a hill, where it gets even worse, lol.  

Well then, howdy neighbor, hahaha!



I do like "signs of habitanance" in a case like Judith's. I like the idea of putting up a sign on a road that looks overgrown or unused. People like to explore whether there intentions are innocent or not.