[deermeister]

I almost hate to tell this story, because I still get mad about it.

In 1990, the second day of the Michigan firearms season, I was hunting my family's land. Around 10:00, I killed a fair sized buck, nothing to brag about, but nothing to be ashamed of either. As I was bent over, intent upon gutting it out, I heard a shot; nothing unusual there, it was gun season. I actually heard the bullet flying through the air, about ten feet over my head and to the right. I moved a bit to my left, and continued cutting the deer. Another shot rang out, and this time it zinged through the air about six feet off the ground and to my left! I'm shocked, and all I can think of is to jump behind the deer and lay flat. I grabbed my rifle, pointed it toward the woods where the shooter was and yelled "Hey! Do that again and I shoot back!" This is in the middle of an open field, I'm in plain sight, wearing enough orange to make a highway worker proud, and this idiot in the next section over just opened up on me. After a looong time, I made a break for the swamp all hunched over (all I could think of was Peter Falk in "The In-Laws"--"serpentine, serpentine!") and got the heck out of there.

A couple of days later, I confronted the idiot in his yard, when he was armed with nothing more lethal than a bag of garbage, and let him know what I thought. Turns out that in his mind, I shot HIS deer before it could cross the river to his property, and he felt that was a mature way to deal with it. I pointed out that the deer was a good 150 yards from the river when I shot it, and it wasn't even headed his way. Needless to say, we still don't get along.

The second one isn't so scary, it's just weird. My brother and I went bowhunting together, and decided to hunt two separate stands of pines about 200 yards apart. It was way before daylight. I got to my stand first, and as I was settling in, I could see his flashlight as he headed across the field. With nothing else to look at, I idly watched the light. It crossed the field, went up his tree, and turned off. A minute or so later, I see the light turn back on, go down the tree, travel about 70 yards (the length of the stand of pines), pause, go back and up the tree. Knowing how obsessive he gets about laying down extra scent, I just thought it was odd. We hunted the morning, and about 11:00 I saw him come out of the pines and start across the field toward me. I gathered my stuff, climbed out of my stand, and waited for him. When he got close enough, I asked him what he was doing at the other end of the pines, and he said it wasn't him. He had climbed in his tree, turned off his light and just waited for daylight. I told him what I had seen, and he was more than surprised. It was dead calm that morning, and he had not heard a twig snap, let alone any footsteps. Just makes you wonder...