You get there and either another hunter is all set up
OR
Someone has set up camp RIGHT where you planned to get your animal!
Happen to anyone?
Yes. A couple different times. The worst part, it was on posted private land that they didn't have permission to hunt.
A few times. It only took the first time to make me realize I needed to scout/prepare multiple plans.
Hunting options are a good idea, especially when hunting pub land.
🦫
Not hunting, as mostly our own land.
Fishing, quite regularly !
Quite often, for me. Both people on the ridge I wanted to hunt, and camps set in an area I had been planning to hunt.
Always have a plan B and C but I almost always try to be as early as I can, to be the first there even if it means sitting in the dark for an hour or so. That doesn’t stop some folks from hunting right on top of you though. It is what it is.
A few times. It only took the first time to make me realize I needed to scout/prepare multiple plans.
Hunting options are a good idea, especially when hunting pubkic land.
+1. I've also had people walk up within sight of me and sit down. Twice. Both times I got up and left as noisily as possible.
Had some guys set up a “camp”, pretty sure it was just a couple tents for decoys to keep people away, right on the flat on the backside of a ridge I like to elk hunt. They had also driven ATVs hundreds of yards off the marked trail illegally to haul everything in to their “camp”. Shot a bull 150 yards from their tents while they were away.
Hunted a place one year where someone had flown in and set up tents beside the airstrip well before season. Luckily my pilot had been flying over and nobody had been there for weeks. We landed anyway and set up camp right beside their tents. Killed a moose 2 days later. Flew out and hadn’t seen anyone even fly over the whole time.
Last year when we got to the meadow we always put our base camp in in CO there was a 30’ Gooseneck full of gear parked in “our” spot. Oh well, just set camp across the forest service road and went about business as normal. The only thing that kinda pissed us off about the whole deal was that the owners of the trailer and all the camping gear never really set up camp and only spent one night there all season, they went to town and stayed in a motel the rest of the time. Probably hiding from their wives or something.
It’s public, I just try to follow the rules and be reasonably courteous when I bump into someone.
Reminds me of the nice buck that I had scouted out next to an evergreen swamp. Early opening morning I parked well away and got to my ridge fifty yards above his main trail and rub line. About an hour in I hear a vehicle driving up the logging road, park, slam a door and in walks a guy with a camp stool who sits right below me next to the swamp. Twenty minutes later BANG, damn! Then the guy has the audacity to walk up to me and tell me that he partied the night before and forgot his knife and could he borrow my knife to field dress “his buck”, a very nice eight point. Opening day was a bust, so I loan the guy my knife, watch him gut the deer and help him drag it to his truck.
When I was stationed in CA I hunted blacktails on public land. One year I found a waterhole way back in that was clobbered with deer sign. I packed in the night before and set up a dry backpack camp about a half mile from the waterhole. On opening morning I was about 200 yards above the waterhole set up with a 243 and right at sunrise about 45 boy scouts came hiking in and set up camp right next to the waterhole.
I went down and talked to the scoutmaster and he didnt even know it was opening day. I still tagged a buck but I had to dig it up out of a thick brushy canyon. It would have been nice to just watch the waterhole but they had as much right to that spot as I did.
Pffft
Try public land duck hunting.....
Nobody hates a duck hunter like a duck hunter.
Yes, coues deer hunting in Arizona. Hiked two hours in the dark to set up on a rough canyon with the only water I knew of for miles in a trough at the base of the cliff coming out of a seep. As the sun came up I saw a tent set up directly below me about 100yards away from it and a pop up camo ground blind about 15yards from the water hole. About a minute later I picked up the flash of binoculars looking back at me across the canyon on the skyline. Turned to leave and passed a guy hiking in the trail I was going down. This was about 12 years ago and google earth was just getting popular as a way to scout and I later discovered that my hidden little secret spot was the only green dot in the desert if you looked on line. That was the first time I had even seen another hunter in that canyon in three seasons.