Marijuana crops in National Forests, danger for wood squatters?

[threeoten]

I've read about marijuana crops and meth labs out in the middle of National Forests (esp. in Cali). I wanna do some woods livin' in some of these areas, but this kinda concerns me! (i'm NOT tryin to get shot!). Does anyone here have any experience coming across this kind of situation in the woods?

I found this thread in another forum:
iB::Topic::Marijuana in National Parks and National Forest

 

[stove]

Yeah stay the fuck out of NorCal.

If it is a problem, there is a distinct smell in the air. Do you know what Mexican food smells like? That's your warning. You will smell it miles before you smell the dank herb. Stop, look around, and walk the other fucking way. You don't want to stray into someone's crop. "Oops, Sorry, I got lost" doesn't really cut it. Accidents are really easy to manufacture in the wilderness...

 

[threeoten]

This just blows my mind, really. Maybe I'm just a naive Minnesotan.. but damn! So do they just own the fuckin forests or what?? I know people still do hiking in these forests, so I'm curious how much of a risk it actually is wandering/squatting out there? So it's primarily Mexicans then, I take it?

 

[Linda/Ziggy]

Hi,
Greetings from Mendocino county.
Yes unfortunately the drug cartel (Mexican - & white too !) are destroying our forests up here.
They are gonna start doing vehicle searches in some of the forests here,
Because things have gotten so bad with the large scale pot grows (that destroy the watersheds,
pollute the water & the soil, innocent people get murdered etc etc etc.)
If your gonna come out here and try this I would be very careful and do your research.