Stolen ATVs. Smashed tractor windows. How one Brant County farmer is protecting his rural property after theft

Last December, in the dead of night, Burford farmer Larry Davis’s motion detectors went off. Two trespassers had kicked in the door of the large shed he kept his ATV in.

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In the time he called police, the people made off with his ATV, driving it through the back of his property, on a farm lane lined with corn fields.

“I never did see how they got out of here,” Davis said.

On other occasions, he found the door to one tractor smashed in, a broken window frame on another.

The incidents inspired Davis to beef up his security — reinforcing the doors to buildings on his property, making them harder to break down, installing a keypad door lock that allows him to assign an individual code to employees, and installing tracking devices on his ATVs.

The OPP has seen an increase in rural crime recently, Const. Jonathan Bueckert told The Spectator.

“We’ve been dealing primarily with theft-related incidents, often involving large farming implements and various off-road vehicles,” he said.

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He cited the size and layout of rural properties as challenges to surveillance and monitoring.

Now, the OPP and Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) — which Davis is director of — are working to spread the word and help farmers and rural residents protect their properties.

The OFA suggests rural property owners:

• Invest in good quality locks — and use them.
• Use motion-sensor or timed lighting to minimize shadows for intruders to hide in.
• Use well-placed cameras to help monitor property around the clock and remotely.
• Use GPS tracking for larger farm equipment that can give an alert if equipment is stolen, and show its location.

Davis also said to be wary of drones overhead that could be casing the place.

While modern technology is providing new ways for folks to protect their property, Davis still relies on an old standby — dogs.

One of Davis’s previous dogs dug up an attempted theft of one of his four-wheelers.

His two newest pups have two more weeks of heartworm treatment “and then I can start working on them to be night safe,” he said.

Celeste Percy-Beauregard is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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