Talked to my Buddy about letting my wife kill some does off his lease. He talked to his Land owner and got the go ahead. Well I told my wife it is all set and if she could get off work a little early so we could get there in time so things could settle down before the big last minute rush to the grain field. We got set up and ready and in no time the deer were moving all around us. The only problem was that they were in the other fields that were too far for her to shoot even though I she can shoot a hole in a Gnat's hair. Well I range the shots that she might get so I can tell her the shot placement for the cross hairs. Light is fading when some doe show up at the 300 yard range, I know the rifle and that she trusts me so I gave her the go ahead and the point of aim. Boom, whack, jump kick and gone. They jump the fence cross the road over another fence. Then a truck comes down the road minutes after she shoots, stops backs up then turns into the property across the road where the deer ran. Then way over to the right another big doe come out in the field just 200 yards away. Now it is a chip shot for my Sniper wife and that is the range the rifle is sited in anyway. I tell her just put it where you normally shoot and blam down goes the doe. Well this is where the fun starts. Knowing the light is fading fast we need to try to find where the first deer went before it get too dark. We get in the truck drive down the road to the neighbor's gate where they went in so we can get permission the look for the deer. We round the corner and go up the road a little ways and there she lays right out in the neighbors field deader than a hammer. We stop at the gate and wait for the man to come out so we can ask him for permission to go get the deer. I turn off my lights leaving on my parking lights trying not to disturb him if he is trying to get a deer. Well legal shooting time has been up for about 10 minutes so I know he probably isn't hunting any more. I see the cow surround his truck so I figure he is feeding the cows and it is staring to get late. Now for the turn. I open the gate, walk through and close it behind me. I'm looking for the man now when I see a dim light to my right. I holler at them to make sure that they see me. It is a man and his son Hiding in the brush waiting. I'm' waiting on them and they were waiting on me. They think we are road hunters. He asks me to go back to the gate and I'm asking him if it is OK to go get her deer when 2 truck pull in behind me blocking us in. Now it gets Western when an Older man (the other man's dad) comes up yelling at my wife wanting to know where the other one was. (I, at the time was unaware of him speaking to my wife the way he was) He now comes up to me asking me 5 times if I have a pistol on me and I tell him that I have my rifles in the truck. He then starts to tell me that if I had a pistol on me it was going to be a Federal Offense. All the time I'm trying to tell him what is going on and he is being a vigilante like he is the law of Coleman County. He is on the phone trying to get the Sheriff and I finally have enough and tell get the sheriff because I'm starting to get worried about my wife and I's safety because we are blocked in by 4 adult men out in the country with one acting crazy. My buddy show up trying to clear up any misunderstanding and now he turns on him yelling that he has beer on his breath and he is drinking driving and he is going to have him arrested too. I tell him to go back to the camper on his lease so this crazy man will calm down. IT IS GUILTY TILL PROVEN INNOCENCE. He is now chasing my buddy trying to get his license plate number so I am following him so I can show him the blood where the deer jumped the fence and crossed the road. Now He believes me and say I can get the deer. I ask if I can drive in and get her deer and he tells me to get my wife to crawl over the fence and go get her deer and drag it back to the road which I was not going to let her try by herself. He is still on the phone trying to get someone to come out. We go get her other deer and get them all tagged up legal wise. Then they make us get in the ditch so they can get by so I pull into blood weeds that are 10 foot high so the &%#^$** can go by. My buddy calls his lease owner and he shows up just a minute too late. He was happy that my wife got rid of 2 grain munchers but she is still shaking from the fiasco and can't enjoy the hunt that went from the highest of highs to the bottom of the cellar.

Now my question is was I in the wrong for walking through the gate trying to find the man that was there?
Is this one of those Harassment of hunters situations that I can file charges on?

The Sheriff needs to tell him that this kind of vigilante behavior can get him, his Grand Son and Sons Killed. What if I was a road hunter with a bunch of guns not wanting to go to jail for a felnony and my buddy had them in his cross hairs?
If charges can be brought up by me I will go through with it so it might save there lives next time.

WOW, I've never run into a situation like that. I think you handled it as well as can be expected. In retrospect, I guess you should not have crossed the property line.

It is my understanding that only a LEO can hold a person against their will. You may have cause for a suit but have no real witnesses other than the offenders. I think it is important to have the numbers of the Sheriff and Game Warden on speed dial. I believe I would also have been on the phone saying you were being confronted by some crazy ba$tards and feared for the safety of you and your wife. That generally gets a deputy and/or GW there in a hurry.

I would look real closely into filing some kind of charges against these folks.

You handled it a lot better than I would have.

Going thru the gate may have been a mistake, but I think the over-reaction of those folks was a bigger mistake.

Glad everything turned out okay, because that was a situation that could have ended up on both the stae and national news.

Hope nothing like that happens again.

By the way, Congratulations to your wife on making those shots.

That guy sounds like he was on something! You did the right thing and stay as calm as you can especially with your wife so close. Hope your wife relizes not all people are like that.

I think you did the right thing. I used to hunt west of Eden and the property behind us belonged to a pscho anti-hunter. He had to drive right through our camp to get to his gate. He was constantly calling our landowner accusing us of coming on his property but we never were. Luckily, our landowner knew what kind of nut this guy was. He would drive up and down his fence on a motorcycle when we were hunting to make sure none of "his" deer crossed onto our lease.

One day, his truck was stuck in the mud on his property about 50' from our gate (and our cabin). Two of us opened the gate to go see if we could pull him out and he started screaming at us for trespassing! We hadn't even set foot on his property yet. So we went back to the cabin and I secretly hoped he'd have a heart attack trying to get un-stuck just so I could talk to him over the fence during his last moments.

During turkey season one year, I was taking a shower outside (because that's where the water hose was) when he and his wife drove up to get on their property. I'm guessing they were both about 60 years old. Instead of turning around or covering up, I slowly turned to keep full frontal contact as they passed within 10' of me. I think that's my best memory of hunting that lease.

where abouts in coleman county was this cause there have been alot of poachers/road hunters here lately & u should be able to fully file on this if you wanted to, there is a 99.99999% chance that they were TOTALLY in the wrong when u guys were in the right all the way...id be sure to write down times, places, vehicles makes & liscence plates

i think the only mistake was entering someones property (especially gated). you never know what kind of person lives there (frame of mind) and in your instance a skittish one. i am sure they already had you framed as a poacher and were not thinking clearly. it was just a misfortune to you and your spouse to have to deal w/ people like that. its just not worth crossing into properties w/out an ok either visibly of verbally. had the same thing happen to my neighbor and even the le/game warden told him the same thing. only difference was they did not allow him to retrieve his deer - they instead cleaned and kept it for themselves. sorry about that - sounds like everything else about your hunt was awesome.

thats bull. you didnt do anything wrong.

i wouldnt have any problem letting someone retrieve a deer off my property if i was a land owner, as long as i knew about it.

as far as someone yelling at me over this, thats fine.

now someone yelling at my wife......well, they are in a position of getting their a$$ whooped, no matter what land we are on, or how many guns they got. i know this may sound ignorant, but i just dont think i could stand there and blow it off.

and yes i know i could be shot, and face all kinds of charges, so please dont mention it.

I remember, back in the mid 80's, hunting my uncle's place near Pink, Oklahoma there was a crazy old fart that would drive up and down the county road during prime deer time blowing his horn.

My uncle and him had words a few times but nothing ever came of it. Idiot.

Dude. I don't think I'd tell anybody if I was around a place called Pink, Oklahoma.

we used to have an old man in Oklahoma do that also (not in Pink) he found some Ice picks in his tires on day, and after that we never heard from him again.... now being older then 17, I'd probably would handle the situation a little diffrent but it worked back in the day!

Well I just spoke with the Parks & Wildlife and this is what I found out. DON'T EVER CROSS THE FENCE OR GO THROUGH THE GATE. The only time you can cross the fence is with permission. If they are not the land owner but have the hunting, grazing or both rights leased they can file Trespassing and are considered co-owners. If they have an off set gate way and you are inside the normal straight fence line you would be considered trespassing also. I was told what I needed to do was sit there and wait it out or try to contact them another way other than going on in the gate. If I was unable to contact some one for permission that I was to leave the deer and not retrieve it. That would have been enough so that I wouldn't get fined for Waste of Game. They said in no circumstance let a deer get you into my type of situation. The people were in the wrong for the way they handled it and I could try to file on them but TP&W said that the people would probably come back and file on me for trespassing if I did. Now what to do in this situation is to park on the shoulder, yell out for someone to answer or wait till they come out. If they never come out, leave the downed animal and try calling them if you know who is the owners, if not call the local Parks & Wildlife officer and make your situation known. If you are confronted like I was, you need to call the County Sheriff and remove yourself from the mess till they arrive. They don't have to move out of the way to let you out of their gate way.

Another good bit of Info is to know the distance and directions from the major highway. How far down what county roads you have to travel to get to your place. Try to have the direction down so your child could find it in a snow storm blind folded.

Good info JoeDogg thanks I wondered about that hunting on the public land I'm on it's surrounded by private land I I have a feeling they may be sensitive to hunters coming off the Public onto their land.

Yeah Pink, Oklahoma lots of deer around there but Uncle Bud passed on to higher hunting grounds a few years back and the daughter who got the land isn't to keen on 'her' deer being killed. She didn't like it back in the day either but she couldn't do anything about it then. Anyway Uncle Bud was the pastor at the local Pink church up on Hwy 9 so sticking ice picks in the guys tires really wasn't an option.

This is a good reason for everyone to have their local Game Warden's cell phone number in their cell phone. I would call him/her first and ask for their assistance in retrieving the game.

Yeah, where is this in Coleman Co? I just want to know if I have a freaky neighbor.

But I can imagine it has to do with you being a "renter" and not an "owner". I used to live in a duplex, got calls all the time from the city about neighbors complaining about barking dogs. I bought a house, sold it, bought another house. Still have the same dogs and never another complaint since I stopped being a renter.

Some people just take it upon themselves to be @**holes!

Having GPS coordinates for entry and LZ's is a great idea! Our ranch is very remote and directions in an emergency will just not work "go 3 miles, turn at the old shack kind of thing". We have the coordinates on all of your phones and posted next to the phone in the cabin.

jsoukup, It was only about 4 miles out of Santa Anna down the Eden Highway then turn back west down Co RD 266 down about 3 miles

JoeDogg, that's about 20 or 25 miles from me. I reckon that's far enough for me not to cross paths with that guy. We hunt on the river just across from McCulloch County.