If that is what is happening, it definitely is bad business. Just be careful how you approach the area, don't become and accident. If you can get proof and identity,.... then prosecute the heck out of them.
**********Sorry this may be a long reply.**************
I also, consider myself to be an easy to get along with sort of guy. That being said, I will not tolerate someone poaching or hunting my stands in a club. Same difference to me, because if I put the money and time in to draw in good deer and you shoot it out of my stand or by my stand, then I consider you a poacher at the very least someone I will not get along with to put it nicely. JMO
However, yesterday in the rain I took my cousin with me to help finish up my late season food plot. Being in a club, I'll say this when I mark my two permanent stand locations, I mark a large area with ribbon. I do so because I do not want to be shot or shoot anyone else. Because no one knows just where a bullet or an arrow for that matter may end up in the woods.
Well I found evidence, (
not just in my marked area but within15 yards of my stands) where someone who was warned last year not to be hunting my area, had been there again, and had even been watching the food plot area as it was coming up nice and green and full of deer tracks. That is both my locations, I have not got to hunt yet ... due health and injuries of late, but I paid a lot to have my two spots, not to mention what I paid for my larger plot and the mini plot at my honey hole.
So, yes I am a bit mad at the moment. If I catch the guys (2 last year) in my honey hole, it'd be like someone after my wife. And my friends, I promise you you do not want to go there, as the #3LL you will unleash may get you at the very least prosecuted .... the rest goes unsaid.
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True Story, as close as I can remember it, and why I mark a wide area around me when I choose a hunting location.
10 years or so ago, two friends where bow hunting, it had started to rain and one got tired of the light rain and decided to head back to the truck. His friend still roughly 100 yards into the woods. In fact he passed by him on the way to the truck. Well while sitting in the truck, he saw a doe cross the road headed back in a direction that would cross the trail he had just came from.
Opportunity had knocked, and so did he as he knew it would cross the trail that he had not long came up about 30 yards from the truck. He eased out of the truck grabbed his bow and knocked an arrow. When the doe came across his trail he let loose the arrow, but he had mis-judged the distance and shot under the doe. No biggie right? Damaged tip etc., no wounded doe.
Well, darkness fell and still his friend had not come out, so he went to investigate. He found his friend sitting in his tree stand still, and yelled up to him ... with no reply. He could not reply because he was dead. The arrow he missed the doe with hit a large flat stone in the trail and ricocheted upward and some way found it's way through the trees and into his buddy 20ft up a tree.
I would wish this upon no one, and can't even begin to imagine what pain his friend has to live with daily. At least I know it would be daily with me. Sure it was an accident of improbable circumstances no one could have foreseen, but still it was his arrow that end his friends life.
Be safe out there folks.
