In January of 2025 I wrote The Biden Forest Service corrals fencing terrorists. It was the story of Heather and Charles Maude who operate a 400-acre ranch in South Dakota. Their ranch, in the family for generations, abuts the Buffalo Gap Grasslands, and was there decades before the Grasslands were established in 1960.
In March of 2024 the Maudes posted a “no hunting” sign on a fence that had been there for more than 75 years. A never-identified hunter supposedly complained about the sign, the Forest Service was offended, and the Maudes promptly removed it. The Maudes had a grazing agreement with the Forest Service for a quarter century and thought they had a cordial relationship.
In May of 2024, the Maudes met with the District Ranger who wanted to sort out a previously unmentioned boundary issue implicating the fence. The Maudes agreed—they thought—to a survey to once and for all define the fence boundary, a boundary unchanged for 75+ years, which they were told would take as much as a year to complete.
No one knows why the Forest Service suddenly became exercised over a fence they had continually recertified as an agreed, lawful boundary year after year.
Five days later Forest Service “Special Agent” Travis Lunders showed up with a survey team and trespassed on the Maude’s land without permission. On June 24, 2024, he showed up at the Maude’s door in full tactical gear—Forest Service “Special Agents” probably don’t get the opportunity to do that very often–bearing grand jury indictments for Heather and Charles for theft of government property, a 10-year, $250,000 crime. To date, the Maudes have never been given a copy of that survey.
In that January article, I wrote:
This is a tale of two views of government power. Land issues are common in the West where government controls vast swaths of states. As Brauneis notes, in the past the Forest Service worked with ranchers and farmers. They knew ranchers and farmers are America’s best land stewards. If there was an issue, they drove out to the ranch, sat down over coffee, talked things out and sealed the deal with a handshake. Ranchers and farmers went on with their lives and missions—feeding the world—and the American public’s interests were protected.
But under Joe Biden’s handlers, government saw itself not as the public’s hired hands, but as its masters, and acted as arrogant, self-important enforcers of the most miniscule, meaningless, burdensome regulations. Letting the Maudes think things were being sorted out over a year, the Forest Service decided to show them who’s boss.
Thanks to Donald Trump, Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins and Representative Harriett Hageman (R-WY) who took the lead, that didn’t work out so well for the Forest Service.
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Hageman, an attorney who defeated Liz Cheney for Wyoming’s sole House seat, specialized in reigning in government abuses in the West. Hageman was damned good at it and the Maude case was tailor made for her. Rollins said:
“This family, targeted over what should have been a minor civil dispute over grazing rights on 25 acres of public land, was prosecuted — credibly threatened with jail sentences so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children,” said Rollins, whose department includes the U.S. Forest Service with jurisdiction over the Buffalo Gap Grasslands.
Hageman added:
…the actions of an “armed, rogue agent” with the USFS led to the charges over 25 acres the agency hadn’t missed for the prior 75 years and should have been given over to the ranch long ago anyway.
“That is not the way our government should be treating our citizens,” she told Cowboy State Daily after the press conference. “You don’t come in with guns a-blazing with two young people with two young children and say we’re going to give you 10 years in prison.”
Were Donald Trump not reelected, it’s likely Heather and Charles Maude, as inoffensive and law-abiding Americans as one can find, would be serving ten years in federal prison, their ranch seized by government and their children farmed off to whoever. The Democrat propaganda media, if it bothered to cover their case at all, would surely have praised brave guardians of the public welfare like Travis Lunders for jailing such dangerous insurrectionists.
And what of Lunders? There is some indication he has been reassigned somewhere in Colorado. Alaska might be more appropriate and less dangerous to American’s liberties, but I’m sure the People’s Republic of Colorado will appreciate someone like him. I’m equally sure South Dakota is glad to be rid of him.
I’m absolutely certain the Maudes, as all Normal, decent Americans, are.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
