lifesadrag

Ya, thats public land. I was hunting a strip of timber between 2 fieldsduring the rut one year. Had a nice buck come to within 75yds of me, working my way when all of a sudden he throws his head up& swaps ends& takes off. Here comes 3 pheasant hunters. The older fella stops under my tree & the other two set up to drive the field to him. Now I'm picturing this guy swinging on a bird in my direction & blowing me out of the tree. I didn't want to yell to him but he didn't hear me whistling. After yelling to him he was so startled he almost threw the gun into the air. Says he took his hearing aides out because of the shooting.

GooseHunter Jr.

Not while bow hunting, but definetly while goose and duck hunting.

uncle matt

A tissue for footballskrat. That's all I have for you. Public land is open to the public. No reservations needed or accepted.

Like Madjac said, folks aren't sneeking thru the woods looking 20 ft in the air for someone all camo'd up - they're focusing on deer(on the ground).

Don't let that experience bother ya so much IMO. I have been interupted and interupted on public land.

A few years ago me and a nephew weregoing to give Ferne Cliffe SP (S. IL)a try on opening firearm season. So the day ahead of season we were going to do a recon. We were seeing some deer and thenwe came upon a guy we didn't see all camo'd upin a deadfall/blind he had put together - it was nice. Well he got very PO'd (I actually think he had a screw loose). "I could hear you guys coming 5 minutes ago!", "Thanks for scaring any deer away!" "Man you gotta get out of here. You probobly don't have any cover scent on and are smelling the area up.""That's the quickest way outta here (as he points)."

I just said to him, "Yeah? Why don't you take it then?" (I'm not usually so point blank - but he was a JERK.

He said he was going to tell the park super and have us thrown out. We kept on and within a couple minutes we came into a small clearing and stood on the edge talking about what we thought. Bang! DIRECTLY across from us a nice buck comes out into the clearing and we just freeze. (There's one of those deer we scared away with our noise and scent) The buck pokes along the edge and goes back in the woods after a couple minutes.

We saw more deer on the way out, too.

What does the guy think the gun hunters aren't going to be looking around the day before? Yeah - right.

Later we see him over at the shower building and he smartmouthes "Man! What do I have to do to loose you guys?" The nephew was gonna nail the guy but I stopped him - hey we're here to hunt, have a good time & enjoy ourselves, not get in trouble. I just told the guy the only thing that might get lost were some of histeeth.

A little later the park girl who comes around and collects the site fees comes by with the police. That guy said we threatened him and tried to jump him and wanted to "press charges".

I didn't give it any thought - I thought it was freaking hilarious. "And what part of this fairy tale the guy told you do you actually believe?", I asked.

He asks what do I mean fairy tale? I just asked him, "You've seen that scrawnly little wack job, right? Do you actually believe for a second that if we were going to jump him he would be able to do anything about it?"

Then we told him about running into him out in the woods earlier and how he was having a hissy fit out there. The ranger girl said that sounded just like him (turns out she knows him - he's an annual regular). The cop just ran our IDs and left - he was cool with it and the ranger girl apologized and when talking to her a bit she said she had the same opinion of him - missing a chromesone or two.

But bottom line is it may have been the first time it happened to ya - but it won't be the last. Roll with it. Use it to your advantage. Ask these "intruders" what they've seen, etc. Some may one day even drive deer to you - certainly likely and also very possible. Try to turn the negative into any kind of positive you can - no matter how small a positive (it's still a positive). That is what successful hunters always manage to do (atleast that's what I've been told by successful hunters - [X(])

And be careful - cause there's wack jobs out there. Not just the kind I just cited, but think about the WI Hmong incident and the other one that just happened.