Elknut1, I think you bring up a good point about we should have been trying to give the deer away to each other. The truth is I wouldn't even shoot at someone elses deer even if they were missing by a mile until it was very obvious that the deer was out of thier range or no longer visible to them. And when I say visible I mean over a hill or ridge not just in the brush or trees.

Where the problem started was we were in a spot for a good 30 minutes and they came and sat no more than 200 yds from where we were overlooking the exact same hill and they could see us plainly. Fine its public land. Then they started laughing and joking loudly, fine again thats thier right. One detail I left is when they finally sat down we could not see them over a little ledge. Even with them making noise there were a good two dozen deer scattered in the brush on the other side of the hill. They started shooting and some deer started running, in lots of different directions and we could not see what they were shooting at. The 2 bucks run up our side but up the hill from us at about 300 yds. (ranged it later, about 500 from the other group). The other party stopped shooting and we said well maybe they were shooting at something else so we took 3 shots and had 2 deer down. There was a good 30 second pause from thier last shot to ours. After they shot the deer were not limping and going up the hill. They stopped to look around and we shot. We went over to the deer and started cleaning them and about 15-20 minutes later the other party showed up and started claiming the bigger one. By this time we had it tagged and half cleaned. We didn't even know that thought they shot anything. It was very obvious we shot our deer.

I very much believe in being a "friend" to other hunters but this was just blatant theft to me. Sure there is just good sportsmanship beyond laws but just cause you shoot at a deer it doesn't make it yours even if hes shot 2 counties away 3 days later. We were closer than that but there has to be a line where good sportmanship comes in and where you just miss and the animal is gone. I think my point is I belive in sportsmanship very much, especially towards other hunters but these guys came in and showed zero courtesy towards us. I mean who hunts and hill when someone else already has it? Then making all kinds of noise to boot. We were there and a clean and clear shot presented itself and no one else was shooting so we took it.