Ever run into bad guys while hunting?

[338BearHunter]

Damn! Maybe I'm starting to see the benefits of hunting my own land. These experiences make me feel like the Captain Kangaroo of hunting.

Worst problem I ever had was some jerk on an ATV driving up the road on my land, past two "No Trespassing" signs. Wouldn't have been so bad except that I was deer hunting at the time. At least I had a much-needed excuse for coming home empty-handed.

 

[longbow51]

I had a girl from Missouri call me a Yankee once, war's over lady.

Spent a summer at Clemson University during HS. Walking along with my girlfriend (native South Carolinian) and she said, stop walking so fast, they'll think I'm consorting with a Yankee.

 

[JustinsDad]

Dang these stories are better than most TV cop shows.

My stories would be boring compared to these.

 

[vinmcq]

So sad that that type of thing exists

 

[mtnkid85]

Geeze you guys have some good ones. Ive done pretty well avoiding trouble I guess.
A few years ago I pulled off the side of the road to hunt a small single section of public. I was way early so I shut the truck off and was just sitting in the cab with the lights off waiting for a little more light.
I see a rig coming down the road from behind me, he slows down as he went by but kept going over the hill. Almost immediately I see headlights coming back towards me now, as he approaches I start seeing muzzle flashes out his side window and hearing the gun shots. The guy does a mag dump up into the air as he speeds by. I don't think he saw me in the cab, but I was laying down with my piece pointing his way!
Pretty sure it was just an asshole who was pissed that I had beat him to this little section.

 

[EastTNHunter]

Had a guy try to tell me that I was trespassing while hunting a narrow strip of a big piece of public land only access by boat or through hud lease. Said that his hunt club had everything lease all the way to the river. I kept my cool and explained to him that I had a map in my boat showing that I was on public land (before online mapping apps were so accessible), and then he finally admitted that he had just never seen anyone hunt back there before because it was so steep and tough to access.

My story isn’t nearly as exciting as most others in this thread

 

[David658]

I will be hunting in far southern NM this fall, west of El Paso. Going to have to think real hard about how I plan to camp, and how I plan to hunt.

 

[VAspeedgoat]

I'll tell these two in honor of my uncle who passed away a few years ago. He always picked up hitch hikers for whatever reason......yeah I know, but anyway he did.

One night he was returning from his hunting cabin in West Virginia and came across a guy parked on the side of the road but standing outside his car. The guy was clearly disheveled but reluctantly took the offer for a ride back to Harrisonburg. When driving, my uncle kept inquiring why he smelled like gasoline. The guy kept telling him he got it on him while working on the car. At some point the stranger asked my uncle if he was a Christian man to which my uncle said yes. The guy then admitted he had just poured gasoline on himself to light it and kill himself. My uncle got him cleaned up and called his father who came and got him early in the morning.

Another time he was heading out on a huge thing trip in eastern VA. He was crossing Shenandoah national Park and picked up a hiker on the east side of the park. They made small talk but the guy was evasive. Ended up asking my uncle about his Virginia tech ring. Said he always had wished he had gone to school there. He ends up dropping the guy off pretty much in the middle of no where but said he had family there. Come to find out the guy had killed two hikers in the park and eventually broke into a car and stole it near where my uncle dropped him off. He figures the ring saved his life that night.

 

[Nick87]

I'll tell these two in honor of my uncle who passed away a few years ago. He always picked up hitch hikers for whatever reason......yeah I know, but anyway he did.

One night he was returning from his hunting cabin in West Virginia and came across a guy parked on the side of the road but standing outside his car. The guy was clearly disheveled but reluctantly took the offer for a ride back to Harrisonburg. When driving, my uncle kept inquiring why he smelled like gasoline. The guy kept telling him he got it on him while working on the car. At some point the stranger asked my uncle if he was a Christian man to which my uncle said yes. The guy then admitted he had just poured gasoline on himself to light it and kill himself. My uncle got him cleaned up and called his father who came and got him early in the morning.

Another time he was heading out on a huge thing trip in eastern VA. He was crossing Shenandoah national Park and picked up a hiker on the east side of the park. They made small talk but the guy was evasive. Ended up asking my uncle about his Virginia tech ring. Said he always had wished he had gone to school there. He ends up dropping the guy off pretty much in the middle of no where but said he had family there. Come to find out the guy had killed two hikers in the park and eventually broke into a car and stole it near where my uncle dropped him off. He figures the ring saved his life that night.

I'd hope that'd be the last time after that second story, or first one for that matter.

 

[Flatbrimmer]

Yeah dude, I’ve asked my wife if we can pick up at least 10, to her memory. I say a few less but she’s never let me help a ONE. For fear of those stories lol.

 

[hossblur]

Getting to be more and more drug campers. Makes me nervous. Especially late in summer when everything is a tinder box

 

[gouch]

My friend Paul and I were going fishing when a guy flagged us down on the road. He told us he had been partying with friends when he went off to take a pee. He said he got lost and was chased up a tree by a bear where he spent the night, then he fell out of the tree and got a concussion. His good friends, of course left him and went home. He wanted us to give him a ride back to town. He was clearly tweaking so I told him I couldn't give him a ride because I had my dog in the truck and she hated strangers. That was BS because Saidie loved everyone, but it seemed like a good excuse. We did offer to drive back up to the top of the hill where we had cell phone reception and call the sheriff for him, but he said that wouldn't be necessary. I guess he wasn't as bad off as he made out. I don't ever give a ride to tweakers with unbelievable stories.

 

[Westxhunter]

I will be hunting in far southern NM this fall, west of El Paso. Going to have to think real hard about how I plan to camp, and how I plan to hunt.

There are people crossing here and you may encounter a few. But they don't stay here. They are getting bussed up north and sent to random places or heading for Cali. We go shooting out in the desert quite a bit and hunt the areas. You don't have much to worry about.

 

[Mallardsx2]

I ran into some guys in the flattops that said they were "elk hunting". They were from Denver that had scabs all over their faces and they didnt have bows....they both had shotguns... I assume that they were meth heads. I was glad my buddy was packing a pistol and it was very obvious he was packing a pistol. The visit didn't last long and we went our separate ways. I think they had plants in the hills somewhere near there.

 

[gradeAchuck]

Been fortunate to not have any run-ins with "bad guys", just dumb and/or inconsiderate ones. My "worst" pales to many of the other stories but here goes. In PA there is a late-season (Jan) for whitetail and in a few special regulation areas you can hunt with archery or firearms, most of these areas you can only use straight-wall, slug gun, or muzzleloader only. Several years back I was in one of those areas archery hunting in a tree stand on private property (I had permission from the owner) that shared a border with a small church lot. This is a pretty developed area with the houses too close to allow the use of firearms (per the PA regs). I was hunting the edge of a small wood strip no more than 40 yards wide that deer use as a natural highway between larger areas. I had an orange turkey hunting band around the tree I was in and I was wearing an orange knit hat but the rest of my duds was camo.

From my tree stand I can see through the wood strip and into the church parking lot. Just after shooting light I watched a guy park in the church lot, get out, put on his hunting clothes, load a shotgun, and start walking straight through the small wood strip right toward me. He got about 30 yards from my tree, right at the property line, and I decided to whistle and wave at him to let him know I was there. He stopped, looks up, and then looks through his shotgun scope at me! I yelled at him to lower his shotgun. He came over and apologized, feeling real bad after he realized what he had done. We talked for a bit and I point out that the PA regs don't allow firearm hunting where we were due to how close the houses were. He just tells me he has special permission from the church because he is a member there. This is flawed logic because even if the Church did give him permission, he is still too close to the other houses (from where we were standing there were at least 6 houses within 80 yards). Considering he's the one on the ground with a shotgun and I was up a tree with my bow I didn't feel like arguing the point and let the matter drop. I did inform the landowner who seemed to be aware of the other hunter and while he wasn't concerned I certainly was. I hunted that property one other time but was so jumpy every time someone pulled into the church parking lot I stopped going back.

 

[chrispbrown27]

Man, I feel like my years of hunting were a waste! The most I have come across were the remnants of hippies that used to tour the area every summer, called them the rainbow people. They trashed the area and more than once we found what appeared to have been one heck of a party complete with the underwear of some poor girl, or girls, that hadn't cleaned things very well.
I did see something that I can't really explain once. If it was a man, it was the largest man I have ever seen in my life and he didn't seem to want to meet me. It was dark and all I could see was the silhouette of a very large human form that turned towards me and then quickly walked down the gated road I had to walk out on. Talk about feeling under armed with just a bow and a folding knife! I never heard a truck start up or saw headlights and he was a long way from any houses.

 

[mallardman10]

I was hunting the muzzleloader elk season and I decided to make a loop out of camp that would take me back to the access road about 3 miles down from camp. The season was 7 days long, but I had an appointment that I just couldn’t get out of on Tuesday morning. It was Monday afternoon, So I wanted to get back to camp in time to break camp and get on the road before dark. I was hoofing it back up the road, that was nothing more than tire tracks through the brush that cut through 10 inches of hard packed snow. Then I heard a car. I thought it odd because the car was obviously going very fast, and I didn’t think I was close enough to the highway to hear the traffic. I soon realize that the car was on my road, so I stepped off into the brush to let it pass. A Jeep Cherokee zipped by me going at least 50mph probably more, then stopped less than 100 yards away. I had a bad feeling about the people in that Jeep, but I really wanted to get back and wasn’t going to wait for them to leave. I was uneasy enough that I capped and cocked my stuffer before approaching them. There was one guy outside the Jeep who had just relieved himself in the snow then a girl and another guy in the back seat. The guy told me they were hunting but hadn’t seen any deer. Archery deer season was open, but they sure didn’t look like they were bow hunting. I went on my way and didn’t think too much more about it until driving out just after dark when we saw the Jeep. It was on its roof, out in the brush. We checked it out, but nobody was around. There was camping gear spread all around and a small backpack that had spilled what looked like keepsakes a young girl might have in her bedroom. We though it a bit odd but figured they had walked out to get help. We were less than two miles from the highway, so we figured they were probably all right and we went on our way.



The next afternoon while driving back to our camping spot we reached the place the jeep had left the road. There was a sheriff deputy and a Forest Service LEO standing there. I told them my story and they were very surprised when I referred to the guy I talked to outside the jeep as a kid. They told me the Jeep was registered to a 58-year-old Hispanic man. I said, no, the kid was blond, blue eyed and no more than 20 -22 years old. Then they asked about the girl. They really wanted to know about the girl. So, I told them she looked very young and that she was laughing about something with the other guy in the jeep. They said they suspected the girl was a 14-year-old that had been reported as abducted on Saturday and asked if I was I sure she was laughing. I told them that she definitely looked like she was having a real good time. They were relieved to learn, that the girl might be a runaway and not an abductee and the owner of the jeep was no longer a suspect in that reported obduction. They then asked me to show them the spot where I had talked to the guy. As we were going back to the truck my buddy told me that the deputy wrote down my license plate number. When we got to the spot, the deputy said his partner thought I looked familiar, and could he please see some ID? Without missing a beat my partner asked them if they had ever looked at the FBI most wanted posters in the post office. I just laughed and told the LEO that we both worked for the Forest Service, out of the same building, and that I had seen him dozens of times around the office. The light bulb went on in his head and he then recognized me.



Later that week I met a guy who told me that after they had crashed the jeep they had sneaked into his camp and stolen his truck. He was mostly mad that his dog didn’t see fit to bark as someone was sneaking around camp stealing his truck. It turned out that the guy driving the Jeep to was 24, the girl was indeed the 14-year-old runaway and they had been on a little weeklong crime spree out there in the woods. They had stolen three vehicles, a lot of camping gear, and one handgun. He had that gun on his hip when I saw him. They stole food, a lot of booze, and whatever else wasn’t tied down. When the cops stopped them, they ran off into the woods and tried to bury themselves in the snow. All that did was make them cold and wet. I never did hear anything about the other guy I saw in the Jeep. The worst part is I never did kill an elk.

Tweekers

 

[Bowmannate2000]

Man, I feel like my years of hunting were a waste! The most I have come across were the remnants of hippies that used to tour the area every summer, called them the rainbow people. They trashed the area and more than once we found what appeared to have been one heck of a party complete with the underwear of some poor girl, or girls, that hadn't cleaned things very well.
I did see something that I can't really explain once. If it was a man, it was the largest man I have ever seen in my life and he didn't seem to want to meet me. It was dark and all I could see was the silhouette of a very large human form that turned towards me and then quickly walked down the gated road I had to walk out on. Talk about feeling under armed with just a bow and a folding knife! I never heard a truck start up or saw headlights and he was a long way from any houses.

Bigfoot sighting!

 

[perma]

My father and I were ek hunting. We drove up a forest service road and all this sudden a blizzard came. My dad pulled over to put water in the bed. I got nervous so we turned around and headed back. On the road, some log cutters cut a tree and dropped it in the middle of the road making it impassible. They got the tree out but the two dudes were ready to fight each other. One flagged us to drive through but stopped us and asked if we were going to town. The country bumpkin my dad is told him yes and the guy made himself at home by jumping in the truck with this girl, leaving his buddy up there with a truck. My dad did nothing during this whole process. I froze in fear. He tried to talk them out but they weren’t moving.

I was sure I was going to die that day. Guns in the back with them, no pistols. They had a bag and thick burly coats. I unbuckled by seatbelt and turned sideways and kept constant eye contact on them with my hand on the sheathe of my knife. We finally got them to a gas station and never saw them again. Nothing was stolen. I drove 15 hours for this hunt but that 30 minute drive into town was the longest drive of my life.

I told my mother in complete rage of what my dad consented to. All three of us ended up in what id consider the second biggest fight I’ve ever had within my family. The hunt ended that day. I told my dad I was never hunting with him again.

In hindsight, we laugh at it now. I mock my dad and call him Uber of the Rockies. My mother laughs but always makes sure to scald him a bit to remember how dumb we both were. But he long lost his driving privileges during hunting season after that. We’re going hunting again this year.

 

[Farmerj]

Closest to any “excitement”…

Dad worked for the FAA. He was set to go inspect an aircraft for a guy in rural ND.

The feds sent out a special notice, absolutely NO federal agent was to have contact with the guy.

Three days later, …

Gordon Kahl was the guy he was supposed to go inspect…

Altered Lives: Stories From the Medina Tragedy | The Shooting | PBS LearningMedia

When federal marshals arrived in Medina, North Dakota, to arrest Gordon Kahl on February 13, 1983, the violent shootout that followed left two law enforcement officials dead.

www.pbslearningmedia.org

2003, I was on border security with the US customs in northern minnesnowta. I got to work at 10 pm to the welcome sight of some kid sitting at the desk waiting for someone.

“What’s his story?…”

“He’s all yours Sargent. We busted him trying to sneak into Canada and he’s got an expire commissary card and claims to be awol.”

He was pending discharge from the army reserve in the south half of the state.

The county sheriffs took him to the next county, handed him off and leapfrogged him from Roseau county all the way back to Rochester MN. Took 5 days I was told.