Soapweed:
Love your posts and pictures as always. I look on here for your posts first.
It's illegal to carry pliers on other people's land in Texas because of the rustling that was so rampant here early on....and of which we still hear regularly. We are a fence-in state and that is mostly why.
If you cut down a fence in Texas to let your stock through, it would be strongly advised to look all over hell and back for the landowner first. If a fella cuts my fence without my knowledge and I catch him on my land, of course I will ask him what in the hell he thinks he's doing and probably end up helping him when I get it figured out. At first, though, I am going to be very aggressive with the person and probably have a real bad attitude. Other folks finding a cut fence and a fellow rounding up cattle are likely to think the worst and call the authorities and hold the fella at gunpoint until the authorites arrive. As in 30-30 lever cocked in your face.
People up north have a whole different sense of landowner rights than we do here. It's rare to have someone trespass on your land and hunt without permission here like seems to happen a bunch up there. In Texas you would tell him to get the hell out or he is subject to arrest. People that do trespass do it at night, hiding like crazy, and knowing that they could end up shot or jailed over it.
Private property in Texas is just different. In Texas we are beginning to have the state lease some hunting lands like they do in Kansas and Nebraska, but it is still not common. If you hop a barbed wire fence in Texas, you better have your head on a swivel looking for someone. And when you are confronted, you have about the same rights as if you stepped inside someone's front door to their home at night without permission. I'm not saying one way of thinking is right or wrong or better than the other--it's just interesting how we developed different ideas about property in different parts of the country. I'm always shocked to hear about my friends from here that go to Kansas and Nebraska to hunt just drive up to a farmhouse and ask to hunt. Here, you just don't do that.
The plier law is silly, but it illustrates the thinking of private property owners in this state and the positions of power they have held and still do.
There is another funny law in Texas about cattle on raodways. Up until very recently (I think but I am not sure and this may be wrong) in Texas if you hit a cow with your vehicle, the cattle owner was not liable. It was your fault for not seeing the cow or having the sense to steer around it and you could even be liable for replacing the cow.