It isn't exactly what I've run into wandering the West, but here in the East, I've run into my share of stills in the woods of VA, NC, SC, and GA. I suppose over a half-dozen years of 100% field work I ran into a dozen or two stills, or at least got to within sight of workings which had to be stills. Our SOP was to look the other way (quite literally: make a grand gesture of turning your head opposite of the workings and walk directly away as though you never saw anything). We never encountered people, but we always had the notion that we were being watched.
My namesake grandfather was a civil engineer and land surveyor in eastern NC from the late 1920s through the late 1950s. "Pop" was all the time walking up on stills and always looked the other way. Family legend says he always received lots of Christmas cheer in the form of hams, sausage, seasonal produce, and home-made brandies come Thanksgiving/Christmas time, mostly as anonymous gifts from the bootleggers' operations he'd so carefully ignored during the preceding year. Everybody in Nash County, NC knew "Mr Foy" and respected his discretion as to what he saw, or didn't see, whilst in the field cutting and shooting line.
Yeah even on the west coast we know about Appalachian moonshiners, thanks to
Moonshiners... umm...yes, I've watched it a couple of times. Indulging in the occasional white-trash reality series is one of my guilty pleasures.
Maybe you can tell me, Foy: Are those out-in-the-woods stills (such as featured on
Moonshiners) set up on public land -- like, national forest or state forest, or are they on undeveloped private land? The TV show doesn't make that clear. I know very little about the East...but my impression was that there's not that much public land...??
Seems like moonshine-stills back east are like public-land pot-plantations out west.
Your grandad sounds like a cool guy.