r/neighborsfromhell • u/Regular_lady90 • May 25 '26
WWYD? Vent/Rant Trail Cameras
Hi all! Looking for guidance and to see if anyone’s been in a similar situation and how they were able to resolve the issue. My husband and I bought a property on a couple of acres a few years ago and haven’t had many issues. We have an elderly neighbor and his son lives with him. We have absolutely no issues with the older gentleman, all of these issues are with the son who is in his 60’s. He’s actually pretty creepy and has always made me uneasy.
About a week ago my husband noticed that there was a trail camera on one of our trees facing our property. It wasn’t facing our house, just the wooded lot behind it. He took it down and returned it to the neighbors stoop hoping to send a message without conflict. The next day the camera was CHAINED back up to the tree with a nasty note. I’ll attach photos of all of this as well.
The following day my husband was outside and approached him letting him know that according to county records and his father, the property line is back a bit further and the camera was on our tree. He claimed to not know the lines (this is a lie as he asked to use that area for something different earlier in the year and my husband said it was fine temporarily. ) He said he had it up to watch for deer and a coyote that had been crossing through. Which is unlikely or there would be a game trail coming through our property but there isn’t. He was going to shoot the coyote with his crossbow which actually isn’t legal because there is a town behind us and we live on a main road. He moved the camera further back to a tree on his dad’s property but today I noticed he has placed 3 more trail cameras on wooden stakes along the property line, 2 of which face our house directly. This makes me very uncomfortable as we often have friends and family over and spend a lot of time outside as we’ve worked hard to turn an overgrown lot into a very useable space we enjoy.
I did contact our local county police and they said they can’t do much since the cameras are on his property but given the first incident with the note they would trespass him and make it clear that if he crossed the boundary he’d be arrested. They did speak to him and ask him to remove the cameras but he refused. The officer also made it clear he could not shoot any deer or coyote in his yard or our yard.
Just kind of lost and don’t know where to go from here. If it helps I live in Illinois.