As it turned out, during the firearms season last year, I saw and hunted with the owner of the property and explained the above story and inquired about these two bumbling hunters. As I thought, they turned out to be friends of his fathers that had asked to hunt the property. It sounded as though his father had offered his son's property to alot of his old firefighting buddies. These particular two had stuck a deer the previous year that they couldn't find
He thanked me for informing him and said that the next time (3-strikes) it happens, he's going to personally inform them that they are not welcome to hunt his property and will take the matter up with his father.
He also said that he had already heard the jist of my story last Fall-courtesy of his neighbor (very nice man) that had told him about what happened when I drove out the following morning and solicited his assistance (and dogs) in helping to find my shot doe. He said that he appreciated the fact that I would spend another four hours driving back and forth the following day to try and recover my deer. It went a long ways.
I'm a big believer that things have a way of coming full circle. These two fellas did mess up my day of hunting-that's for sure, but had I gotten in their face, I might have placed the land owner in a bad situation with his father and his friends. I haven't mentioned this to anyone other than my wife up to this point either but I think that there's a good chance that these two (or someone else) drug "my" shot doe off as the last spot that I tracked on the property where there was a good blood pile also had fresh mud tracks from a truck along with apparent drag marks and a couple of sets of boot prints slithered around.
As I said before, it all comes around. I ended up harvesting a nice 10 point the following weekend and had an opportunity to get to know the owner and one of his neighbors a little better too!
