It has nothing to do with Hitler: 420.
In some places, certainly.
Or so they’d want you to believe. 
I think “420” means when you get properly stoned, you will be able to answer the ultimate question about Life, the Universe and Everything ten times over.
How close is very close? Do you visit them on their birthdays to cook them a steak dinner and give them a blow job?
I don’t think that’s a particularly controversial position.
Killing people to defend your marijuana fields does sound like something that one typically only sees in film and TV (I was going to say or Mexico and Central America but I think that’s more cocaine than pot).
As someone pointed out, even attempting to kill someone is likely to attract a lot of attention from the authorities. And it’s not even much of a deterrent as it presumes one already knows where the pot fields are so as not to go near them again.
I’d suspect it only really works on other dealer and gangs who are unlikely to go to the police.
This seems needlessly snarky in General Questions.
Stay out of it, noob!
Although it’s not just rival gangs they have to worry about. You’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars worth of drugs just laying around out in the open. There are a lot of people who aren’t professional criminals but would nevertheless be tempted to help themselves were they to stumble on an unprotected grow op.
Also in terms of deterrence and of keeping the locations secret, from what I understand of the situation in Northern California at least is that law enforcement has nowhere near the resources to bust all the grow ops they identify during the growing season. So keeping the locations secret isn’t really a huge priority, since it’s pretty much luck of the draw whether law enforcement will decide to raid yours this year or not. The growers can keep rivals or opportunistic locals from messing with their stuff though, hence the traps.
Moderator Note
This is the General Questions forum, not the Pit. Do not derail threads with posts like these in this forum.
I guess, but you’d think placing traps would move you to the top of the list of people to crack down on that year. And you’d presumably face a much harsher sentence when they did.
I think if I were a grower, I’d rather people who found my crop just help themselves to it. After all, in that case they’re unlikely to go to the police, while if I start blowing up hikers, the chance of the cops getting involved probably rises to 100% pretty quickly.
A guerrilla grower might have scouted a plot for a year, prefertilized the area, carried rooted cuttings in, then babied them along. Then (s)he lugged jugs of water seriptitiously for two months. The general consensus is that rippers deserve death.
I’ve heard.
Plus the whole idea is to set the grow ops up in corners of the forest that don’t see regular (legitimate) use. While it’s possible that some clueless hiker could randomly happen by and ignore all the obvious signs of an illegal grow op, it’s a lot more likely if someone is in the position to get snared by the traps, they’re there intentionally. And aren’t going to go crying to the ranger if they get punji-ed.
what signs are those?
People want to grow dope in national parks and the Feds don’t have the resources to stop them.
Cliven Bundy wants to graze his cattle on federal land.
I’m seeing two problems that solve each other, and a budding market for weed-fed beef, C-4 tenderized.
There’s the telltale stuff like pvc irrigation, gardening supplies and the plants themselves. But more generally, one of the big problems is what unbelievably untidy campers the growers are. Sites that have been remediated often have literally tons of garbage and human waste that have to be disposed of. People obviously do get surprised by them from time to time, but in general it’s not like they’re meticulously hidden or anything.
When I lived in Hawaii, I heard stories of growers shooting at helicopters that flew too close to the fields on the Big Island.
Blunt Burger. Home of the charbroiled Blazer.
The steaks have never been higher!
Something tells me that you would be a very financially embarrassed grower, with no product to sell after a very short time.