What a year its been. Started out by getting an elk but that trip went a little south, I'll tell more about that when I get the pics developed.

This past weekend was the opener for general deer season. We have a spot on public land that we sit every year and rarely leave without some meat. Well opening morning got to our spot and to our displeasure another group of hunters set up only 250 yds down from us. We were in plain sight but oh well its public land. But to make it worse they were talking loudly and laughing.

An hour later a couple of bucks came jumpin up the draw. The other hunting party was closer and unloaded what sounded like a box of shells. The deer never flinched and continued in our direction. For whatever reason the other party stopped shooting, probably too far away. So my partner and I shot 3 shots and brought down both deer. My partner getting the bigger of the 2, a nice 3x4 buck.

We hiked over to the spot and he found mine first and started cleaning it as I looked for his. Short time later I found it and started cleaning it.

This is where it gets hairy. 2 hunters from the party down the draw show up and immediately try to claim the bigger deer. I politely explained to them what had happened and that they had missed and we clearly killed both deer. They stated that they saw it first and it was thiers. Well to make a long story short 9 people eventually showed up from their party and surrounded my partner and I. We tried to have an intellegent conversation but they were obviously lacking some of thier own. Finally one guy raised his rifle with one hand in our direction and said, "This is our deer, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."

Being my friends deer he decided to walk away. He is a police officer and I was dissapointed that he didn't want to do more but he said he didn't feel like killing anyone over a deeror getting killed ourselves. As we left the area they had already contacted a Ranger and complained that we had tried to steal thier deer. The Ranger found us and immediately recognized my hunting partner as a Ranger who used to work in our very area. We told our side of the story but the Ranger did not take down any info from the other hunting party.

We went out for 3 more days and did not get another deer. Have any of you been in this situation and what did you do?