Columbus farmer gets his stolen property back, but hears from many farmers who haven’t.
Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
COLUMBUS
With this year’s harvest progressing in fits and starts, farmers throughout the state find themselves leaving equipment in far-flung fields. It’s part of the game, but they might do well to think about what they will do if that machinery is stolen.
Jim Sanderson found out last year what that feeling was like.
He farms 200 acres near Columbus and raises Red Angus cows and Holstein beef cattle. He rented some hay ground well away from his home place, leaving his pull-type haybine there between crops. When he returned in August 2008 to cut some hay, his machine was gone.
The Sandersons live in Columbia County, but the theft took place in Dodge County so he had to report it there. He found that county boundaries are one of the problems people face when their machinery is stolen.
“There can be problems in neighboring counties but the county sheriff’s departments don’t communicate with each other on this. They are good, but there are boundary issues,” Sanderson said, in an interview.
“The first thing they ask you is whether or not you have insurance,” he said. He didn’t. But having recently retired from a job of 25 years, working as a state power plant superintendent in Madison, he took matters into his own hands.
He began spending all his spare time driving in widening circles out from the site of the theft. “I had the time to give that a shot, but not everybody does,” he said.
His effort paid off. One day the Mac-Don haybine was spotted a mere 200 yards from the road – just a few miles north of the Columbia County line in Green Lake County. The police were called to the scene and because he had extensively described the machine in his original police report, Sanderson was able to take his haybine home that day.
“There was no question it was mine. When I reported it stolen I had given them the serial number and I had described where there were welds from repairs I had made,” Sanderson said. “I had even told them what tools I had in the tool box. I told them for added proof my fingerprints would be on those tools, but they said that wouldn’t be necessary.”
Sanderson’s discovery of his stolen haybine may have solved a multi-county spate of similar thefts. After search warrants were issued, police searched the farm of Gene Sauer, Cambria, where the haybine was discovered. Several weeks ago he was arraigned in Dodge County Court on three Class G felony counts for items stolen from Dodge County farms.
Green Lake authorities are investigating for machinery that was stolen in that county.
“Once the detectives worked together things started to happen, but before that it wasn’t like they said ‘be on the lookout for this haybine,’” Sanderson said.
Sanderson has been subpoenaed to testify in the Dodge County case, which is already on the court calendar. Also subpoenaed are Ballweg Implement and Waupun Equipment. Sauer is scheduled for several hearings in November.
According to Sanderson, some items from Sauer’s farm were recently sold at auction and at least one of them was recognized as a hay elevator that had been stolen from a consignment sale at Equity in Lomira. “It still had the Lomira sales auction tag on it,” Sanderson said.
Sanderson believes that if more people were on the lookout for stolen equipment it would help farmers recover their equipment and bring thieves to justice. “One of the problems is that if people have insurance they kind of figure that’s the end of it,” he said. “I didn’t have insurance and it would have cost me about $15,000 to replace my haybine.”
While he looked for his stolen Mac-Don 4000, Sanderson hired someone else to cut his hay.
He believes there should be a database at the state Department of Justice (or somewhere) where reports of stolen farm machinery could be logged in so people across county lines would know where to find that information. After he went on a local television station recently to talk about his experience, Sanderson became a clearinghouse of sorts, for people who had experienced thefts and were frustrated by their attempts to get their machinery back.
Sanderson mentioned an experimental skid steer that was on display at the Dodge County Fair; it was stolen from the fairgrounds on Sunday evening, right as the rush of cattle and other exhibits were leaving the grounds.
His advice to farmers is to have very good information on their machinery, including serial numbers, in case they need it for police reports. “And keep stuff away from the road,” he said.
Talking to detectives and other authorities, Sanderson has learned that all-terrain vehicles are a prime target for thieves. “Farmers use them to get back to the field to do their combining or whatever and leave them sitting there. I’m told they are a hot item for thieves,” he said.
Sanderson is just glad he’s got his machine back, safely tucked away in his machine shed.
“It was a stroke of bad luck that it got stolen but it was a stroke of great luck that we found it.”
