Now I just feel bad for this guy...
 

My buddy and I consistently hunt a large public property in our area. Since the season opened in September him and I have both had our frustrating moments with other hunters. This includes, but is not limited to, people setting up within 50 yards, walking through the woods aimlessly right before sunset, the list goes on and on. But hey, what can you do? These are things we have to put up with because we lost the lease to our farm from last year and I needed to find a place to hunt before I leave for training in the spring. So for the most part we bite our tongue and do our own thing. What happened yesterday put me over the edge. My buddy went out to a new property that opened 01NOV unfortunately, I couldnt join him. He has a great night; sees deer all afternoon and was able to take a nice doe (we have to shoot a doe there before we take a buck). Well on his way out of the woods he runs into an old timer and asks about his hunt. The old timer was actually not hunting but came back to look for a nice 8pt that he shot and let lay. When the gentleman followed the blood trail to recover his deer, he found at the end of the blood trail..........a pile of guts. Some ***hole had stumbled across his buck, gutted it right then and there, and tagged it as his own. I couldnt believe someone would actually do this. Do people simply not have any type of moral code? These are the type of people that give this great sport a bad name. I hope I hear this piece of you-know-what bragging about a deer he shot. I will be going out tonight to bag a doe and will be on the lookout. FURIOUS!. Rant complete.

It might be possible the guy who found the deer thought it had been lost so he took it rather than let it go to waste. I wouldn't take someones deer even if I thought it was going to waste, but some people might.

A friend of mine shot a deer, made a marginal hit. Went home to get his dog that tracks pretty well (he can't see blood very well), came back within 1 hour and after tracking a bit came up to a father and 2 sons tracking his deer. Apparently one of them saw the deer then found some blood. They said they waited a while, assumed nobody was following, and they thought maybe they could track and get another arrow into it. There's all kinds of "hunters" out there.

That exact thing happened to me last year on public land with a mid 140s ten pointer.. nothing more infuriating

A few years back I was pulling up to my house well after dark and heard my dogs way down on the back of our property giving some yotes hell. They are Great Pyrenees and they love to get a hold of a coyote any chance they get. I usually leave them be, as we have multiples that guard our animals and in a tussle they never lose.
For some reason I decided to hop back in my truck and go have a look.
When I got there the yotes had bolted with the dogs in pursuit but what I found was a NICE 5x5 160+ on my land with an arrow sticking out of his vitals. He hadn't been there long and was still warm to the touch. I tracked the blood back off my land several hundred yards, and figured a public land hunter shot him and lost him.
The weather was in the mid 20's, and wasn't gonna warm up ANY time soon, so I gutted the buck on the spot, and winched him about 10 feet of the ground.
I took the arrow and stuck it in the ground at the fence line with a note, and directions on where to find the deer.
After work the next day I got home, and found a note on my door explaining that the deer was shot by a boy and his dad on their first hunt together. Also at my door was a styrofoam cooler with 2 backstraps in it. :)

That is an awesome story. Im glad there are such good people out there still. You were awesome for doing that for them and they returned the favor. But back to the initial post, that really sucks, the worst part is that there will always be people around that have no morals and will stoop that low and be proud of "their buck". It's just sad. I hope they find the guy, check with local taxidermists to see if it has been taken to one.

i had the same thing happen to me this year on oct1 i guss some people don't care that makes me mad