Kind of a funny story, before MA legalized I had a couple of shitty plants, and I mean like 4 or 5, one was like 2 feet tall but I had a five footer that was pretty raggedy, not even sure if it was a male or what. I had a 'friend' over, and while drinking a beer out by the pool, I nodded to a plant he never would have noticed, then he saw another one. And another, BUT, as I said they were pretty much scrap at 5his point. So while I'm at work in the tobacco fields, my poor little old lady mom was staying here visiting when "The Raid" occurred.
She heard the chopper first, and then a bunch of black suvs pulled in. "They came out like ants" my mom said, and swarmed the property. To this day I'm not sure what my 'friend' reported, but they came to the door, offered no warrant, no paperwork, asked who lived there, mom say, " My son, and your lucky he's not here, I almost grabbed the shotgun myself" Mom was pissed as they never identifies themselves as law enforcement , had no patches or name tags or badges she could see until the lead guy pulled his chain out from his shirt. While the guy.is standing there, as if he wasn't feeling foolish enough, a second guy came up with literally a handful of homegrown, three 3 ft plants, (12 of them missed a 6 footer don't ask me how)
"That's all we got?" The 2nd guy just nodded and slunk away. They all got in their rides and rolled out.
Price of helicopter just to fuel up and turn over with crew for a flight, about $10,000. A dozen UPik3Letters officers and vehicles, probably the same. No charges, no media coverage or laurels, = Huge waste if time and taxpayer money, when they could a sent one guy to verify, well, anything.
Grin on Ma's face when she still tells the story to this day, priceless.
The choppers we used to see here in Western MA usually rolled through in September. National Guard deployed in tandem as the Wendell State forest used to be a hotspot. Chopper would spot, then send in ground teams for larger guerilla grows. Around here, that usually was anywhere from 10-20 to 100 plants. And they always waited until close to harvest.but not too close.
Now, with the technology they have, both planes and copters can take photos of suspected areas and easily identify specific colors and heat signatures I think. They buzz the house sometimes, and with a couple snaps can determine exactly how many plants I have.
So I obey the law. It's simple. Locks, fenced in, out of view of public - done. Now all I gotta worry about is the thieves. At one gate I have a white faced hornets nest you'd have to greatly disturb to come thru, a fat skunk named Daisy that roams the patch each night digging grubs in the back and coming to sleep under the deck , and a. few cameras and motion detectors.
I sleep easy knowing that with all these things in place , there should be no problems.
May we all be so lucky.