PointMan
10-22-2010, 05:53 PM
Might be over reacting, might not, you tell me if I did right or not. If not, how would you have handled it?
This morning I headed out to try and pick up my WT doe, even a buck if I was lucky. I have permission to hunt on some ranch property that I know houses some fairly regular WT traffic, so off I went. I got there while it was still pretty dark, picked a spot to sit and stayed put till about 8:00 ish. It's a fairly open field, about 330 yards long and the tree line around it is narrow, so if there was anything standing among them I would have spotted them with my binos. Since nothing was obvious, I decided to hike around the fringes hoping to spook something bedded down. As I came out the far edge of the tree line I noticed a truck parked about 800 or so yards up the hill. I hadn't seen it when I came in because of the dark, and my sitting location was too far in for it to reach my field of vision once the sun came up. Not being able to see if there was anyone in the truck or not, I decided to head up there to see. My logic being, I was planning on doing some hiking around and if they were not in the truck, I was going to hunt somewhere else (for everyone's safety), if they were in the truck I was going to see what they had mind, and again, move on if need be. Problem is, once I got to within 400 yards of the truck, it fired up and they took off up the hill. Now I thought what I was doing made good ethical sense, but seeing them drive off before I got there makes me thing all I did was pee them off for ruining their morning hunt. I dunno, I hope not, but sure seems that way. What do you guys think?
This morning I headed out to try and pick up my WT doe, even a buck if I was lucky. I have permission to hunt on some ranch property that I know houses some fairly regular WT traffic, so off I went. I got there while it was still pretty dark, picked a spot to sit and stayed put till about 8:00 ish. It's a fairly open field, about 330 yards long and the tree line around it is narrow, so if there was anything standing among them I would have spotted them with my binos. Since nothing was obvious, I decided to hike around the fringes hoping to spook something bedded down. As I came out the far edge of the tree line I noticed a truck parked about 800 or so yards up the hill. I hadn't seen it when I came in because of the dark, and my sitting location was too far in for it to reach my field of vision once the sun came up. Not being able to see if there was anyone in the truck or not, I decided to head up there to see. My logic being, I was planning on doing some hiking around and if they were not in the truck, I was going to hunt somewhere else (for everyone's safety), if they were in the truck I was going to see what they had mind, and again, move on if need be. Problem is, once I got to within 400 yards of the truck, it fired up and they took off up the hill. Now I thought what I was doing made good ethical sense, but seeing them drive off before I got there makes me thing all I did was pee them off for ruining their morning hunt. I dunno, I hope not, but sure seems that way. What do you guys think?