So I'm hunting an area in the Sierras that I had scouted for about three weeks before season opened. I had found a beautiful 5 point (10 for easterners
) that crossed a clearcut in the evening and came back across in the morning at first light. I found a little cubby hole behind a downed tree that I could make a comfortable place to sit with a perfectly situated tree for a rifle rest. I'm all set a couple of hours before sunrise, snug as a bug in a rug in my arctic parka. As it started going into first light I'm using the scope to see at the opposite edge of the clearing when I see my buck ***** footing out of the woods. My shot was an easy 225 yards for the Sako .243 I was using that had been my old faithful for years.
As I'm looking at squeezing off a shot as it was standing there a shot startled at least five years off of my life. I saw a bullet hit the ground under the deer, it froze him like it will sometimes do and another went over his back. I'd seen enough and popped him right behind the front shoulder. I could tell the shots were coming from a quartered off position so the guys weren't in a crossfire with me.
It took me a few minutes to cross the rough fresh clearcut and these two bozos were whooping it up by my deer. I had slung my rifle and pulled my 6 inch Python out (in the guise of dispatching a stone cold dead deer
) I was really more concerned about having a clear drop on my two clueless yokels.
I walk up and announced that this was my deer, they said no it's not, we shot it. I said no you didn't, you shot at it. They asked how I knew that and I told them that anybody would be able to tell which side of the deer was shot and which had an exit wound (.243's are good for that). The guy points to my entry wound and says looky right here, that's where I hit it, I laughed and said that's where I hit it, turn it over and you'll see a way bigger hole.
They turn the deer over and one of these morons says it's still our deer, there's two of us and only one of you. My comment was to point out that with a .357 in my hand I didn't see the number advantage. This clown acted like he was going to go for a gun and I had to get deadly serious and tell him not to be a fool because I was not going to let him pull a gun or point a rifle at me, I said "be very careful here, you're making this a very touchy situation".
One of them told me I could have half of it???? I had been weighing the logistics of defending my turf and having to drag a 200 pound deer to the road and decided I didn't want to have to shoot two Darwin award recipients over a deer, so I told them to go ahead and take it. These guys would have more than likely shot me as I took care of the deer. The area I was at outside of Georgetown is notorious for hunters and hikers getting shot and or disappearing, it was pretty remote.
That was the last hunting I ever did on public land, it was back in about 1988. That was the last straw as far as the idiots that are out there hunting.
Growing up my high school friend lost his 19 year old brother when he got shot in the head hunting with his dad, that wasn't an accident by any stretch.