Maybe, maybe not. I know the thought process that went through my head. It was basically: If they shine and hold the light on me, I'll have to decide whether to defend myself or just wait it out and hope for the best. Thankfully, that decision never had to be made. It also wasn't the first time I'd been in that situation, just the first time it happened while deer hunting.

Their age really has nothing to do with it. I went to highschool with a few folks who are now in prison for murder (among other things). Some were there before I graduated from highschool (they obviously didn't make it to graduation).

Thankfully, I'll never have to worry about what I would have had to prove.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” ---Yoda

I wouldn't ever shoot AT someone who I knew was poaching. But I have put a round through the radiator of some spot lighters who were shooting into our place...from the road

KennyLee, YOU could have gone to prison for murder, had you shot at that spotlight. Thank your lucky stars that you were rational in your decision. NO deer, and NO tresspassing incident warrants shooting someone. In Texas, you might avoid criminal charges, but the civil lawsuits would send you to the poorhouse. Remember OJ? And besides, which one of us wants to go to our grave knowing we shot someone.....no matter the reason?

We caught a poacher on our lease and the GW came and took him to jail. About 3 weeks later, our deer camp was destroyed. I don't know who did it, but someone caught the poacher outside a beer joint the following weekend and beat him so bad he went to the hospital. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people.

Hey retfuz, that is greatness!!! Wish all the poachers and people of those sorts, could all meet that happy ending.Wonder who jacked those guys up? (wink wink)

I haven't a clue.

I only live about 30 minutes from my lease. Its down a dead-end dirt road with no houses down in the bottom. Theres a guy that lives where the dirt road turns off so he knows when Im down there, he comes by with music turned up loud, rifle right beside him, and he cant hunt anywhere down there. Im sure he slips in when Im gone. But, its like someone else said, if I confront him, I'll more than likely have burned down stands and dead deer everywhere...and without any type of proof that hes been in there, wouldnt do any good to call the gw. pisses me off to no end.

Guy on our lease was hunting last year, neighbors have a blind absolutly right on the fence. They basically have to shoot opposite direction. They fire a shot he said it sounded straight at him. Didn't check it out. That evening after dark he was leaving blind and saw the guy working a q beam from the blind on our side. I checked it out next day. They had cut trees blocking shots to our side to create a shooting lane. Guy sees my truck and races over to the fence. I feel like he was trying to keep me from looking around. My guess is they shot that morning left the deer until after dark and were locating it with light to come in and get it. Similar to Txhoghunter's situation the guys live out there and typically know when we come and go. Guy tells me he really only hunts during the week. GW came out and looked at situation and had a chat with them about shooting over fences but until caught in the act there is nothing that can be done. The fact is this probably happens more than people think. And what can you really do? Hope you catch them in the act but most of these people are not stupid. On my land in east texas I have a place that has never been leased for hunting, 2 years ago I found 3 blinds on it. When you own or lease land that you are not near it is almost bound to happen.

I feel your pain. Here is what I did- I went to the neighbor and talked to them, told them I hunt legal and will be pressing charges on any trespassers. Also let them know I try to get along with every one, but don't like it when they put stands on the line to shoot on my side. They left the stand there anyway. Now I park 20 yards from it when I go in. I stop by the local barber to pick up a bag of hair from time to time and put it out on the ground along the property line. I have not seen them hunt the stand in the past 2 years. I guess it must have "played out" I wonder what the deer think when it smells like there are 50 different people hanging around that stand. I think it also helps to show up at random times to hunt.

You are correct, I could have gone to prison for murder and most certainly WOULD have spent some time in jail going through what would be a costly trial process. The mental side would be unbelievably tough as well. It would have absolutely ruined my life, regardless of whether I went to prison or not. I learned some valuable lessons with that experience. I only shared the story so that maybe someone else could learn a lesson from it as well. As I've said, I'm thankful that the events ended the way that they did.

Uh, I've spent my money to hunt where I hunt. To feed me and mine. Would I poach to feed my family, if I had to?
Sure.
But not during the hunting season when others are armed.
Those that try to poach on property that I've leased and try to do it during the hunting season are stupid anyway. They should not be suprised when I employ the three S's.
'Poaching' to get your family meat is one thing, poaching to sell horns and such just for financial gain is another.
There is a difference between eating and money.

We had a couple of incidents in the past 2 years - one possible poaching and the other was thieves.

We first suspected poaching when we saw 4 wheeler tracks coming out of an old oil lease gate that hadn't been used in 20 years. Then we started noticing stuff left in blinds and bullet casings from guns none of us shoot. We put a new lock and chain on the old gate and the wierdness stopped for awhile. Then we notice another gate had been tampered with - this is a gate that the rancher uses only when the ranch roads are too muddy for him to get in and drop some hay for his cows. The rancher is the only one who has a combo to this gate so when we saw 4 wheeler tracks (same ones) at this gate we checked the lock and chain and it had been carefully cut and wired back in place behind the post. You would not have noticed it unless you were looking for it. Since we had already notified the GW, Sheriff and rancher of previous issues, we called them again and let them know of more trespassing. Well, one week later there were 5 of us hunting in the middle of the week. We had been on stand all afternoon when we heard a 4 wheeler on one of the ranch roads. I called all my buddies on the radio and told them to go cover the nearest gate while I went to the one that was closest to the road I heard the 4 wheeler on. Long story short we got the guy and held him until the GW and rancher showed up. GW shows up and calls the Sheriff to take him in - the guy is charged with criminal trespass since he had a gun. No hunting license was another charge. Turns out the guy was a young man around 23, who was the son a ranch owner down the road and had been using our lease as his lease!

Same year we had thives break into our cabin and trailers three times! Turns out it was a gang hitting all the deer camps when they thought the hunters weren't there. Sheriff said first thing they do is look for power poles from the road and if they can see a transformer from the road they know there is a camp, cabin or house there. Then they come back at night in the middle of the week to see if they can see lights from the road. If lights are on then they will check again the next night just to make sure nobody actually lives there. Anyway Sheriff said to put your exterior lights on a timer and set for random periods. We went one step further and set up game cams in the trees around camp and the main gate. Told the Sheriff he was welcome to pull the cards off the camera at any time. Well the deputy came out the next week after our second break in, pulled the card and found pictures of truck entering and leaving. Actually got part of the license plate. He went to camp and found another break in. He called and emailed me the pictures, nobody from our ranch i told him. Turns out it was the adult son of the oil guy who services the wells. As a kid, he used to ride with his Dad on weekends and his Dad made him open all the gates for him. Some reason the kid remembered all the oil and gas lock combinations. He and his buddies were hitting camps all over the county.

i had a buddy whose feeder and camera got stolen by someone. now he doesnt want to take the chance of buying another feeder and camera because he doesnt want it to happen again.
and ive seen some pictures of deer on his place and theyre in the 150s

Our place borders a highway and several years ago we found a deer body with its head cut off right on the fenceline thats on the highway. We also get wetback problems so now we leave our trailer houses unlocked and just lock-up everything inside thats important.

My brother was hunting at his lease outside of Evant years ago and was positioned alongside a dry ditch overlooking the oat field one evening. The hunters on the adjacent property had built a tower stand within 20 ft of the fence line and of course one of the windows overlooked this field. About 4:30 (as usual), the deer began to enter the field (there would normally be 30-40 every evening, mostly does and young bucks). My brother witnessed a hunter climb up the stand around 3:45 but that guy did not know my brother was around. Sure enough, the guy shot a doe, climbed down, crawled over the fence and walked about 75 yards into the oat field to retrieve his deer. He dragged the deer to the fence, then under it and off through the cedar trees he went. This was before cell phones were around so my brother high-tailed it to the truck and drove into Evant to call the Game Warden (Evant was only about 4 miles away). The Game Warden met up with my brother and he showed the GW to the field. He showed the GW exactly where the deer fell (the oats were matted down and there was blood). You could see the "trail" through the oats where the deer had been dragged to the fence as it was matted down and blood scattered along the way. The GW drove around the block to the camp of the other hunters to talk to them. As you would expect, they denied any knowledge of the incident (although a field dressed doe was hanging in the tree). The GW came back to my brother and told him they denied having shot over the fence despite the "evidence" suggesting otherwise. Needless to say, the GW did not fine, arrest or pursue it any further. He said that unless he caught them in the act, it was their word against my brothers. To top it off, later that season, my brothers feeder on that side of the lease was stolen as well and the only access to that side of the lease was from the adjacent property. On more than 1 occasion, he had also found a different caliber shell casing than anyone on his lease used which suggested someone had been hunting his blind, probably on weekdays.

That is bullcrap right there. I guess every crime has to be witnessed or it is just hearsay. That GW should be fired.

Last poacher problem we had was with a lease member. The lease manager only lives a few miles away and loves to hog hunt at night. He caught the guy spot lighting deer at night. He finally admitted to taking 9 deer illegally.

Apparently he was a friend of somebody and the GW wasn't called. I know that was not the lease managers choice, he was pretty heated about the whole thing, especially since anyone who was willing to put some time in would be able to limit out on bucks and does there.

We had a lot of probs with the ranch hands on a lease we had in Ballinger. For a couple of years, we found 30-30 hulls in our stands, windows left open, etc. We finally confronted the landowner about it and he got elbow deep in the ranch hands arse. We thought the problem was solved. WRONG!!! Pulled up to a stand on Thanksgiving Day and had to order the ranch hand out of the stand. The drunk arsed idiot didn't even hear us pull up.
The hand was fired but we started having unusually bad luck with our feeders. For some reason they never seemed to work right.
We finally just got off of the lease.

I am surprised by the high number of problems coming from within ones lease (landowner or leasers). Reminds me 10 years ago I was on a great lease outside Freer.

The landowner was a man we nicknamed "Freaky Fred" for his volatility. Didn't tell the truth well either. Said he had 1000 acres. It wasn't. Many other half truths also, but I digress. Regardless , the hunting was incredible but the one main rule was we hunted our half and he, his wife and son hunted his half. He could drive our half but not hunt. We could not go onto their half period and EVERYTHING was in writing.

We had a 180-190 buck we'd been all hunting for. I passed up a lot of 3.5 year old 10's waiting for it. Long story short, the landowner shot it - out of MY stand. His son got pissed off at him and told us. Didn't know whether to confront him about it for his volatility, but did anyways. He first said he got it out of his stand, then his wife and son basically called him liar in front to his face with us as witness. We didn't know what to say but it got worse, much worse.

He and wife proceed to have a knock down drag out argument which parlayed into 30 years of an unhappy marriage with all skeletons in the closet being aired out right there in front of all of us. There was a tapestry of profanity that still lingers over Duval County from that blow out between Freaky Fred and the unhappy wife. She even said she was glad he couldn't get it up because he was disgusting and didn't want to have sex with him anyways. Son who was about 20 years old was sitting back laughing at his two biological parents almost coming to blows. Strangest thing that he really did think it was funny. Thought for sure someone was going to die that night.

Mid December that last year the big ranch on 3 sides (hwy on the other side with high fence across the street) put up the drill pipe sized poles for high fencing. Completely closed off two sides and partially closed the back. Then midday we hear a helicopter, really close, as in right over us. Son of a gun was pushing the deer off our lease and onto the high fence ranch. We saw a lot of deer running full speed to the back half of the lease and onto the big ranch. Not that we could have done anything about it, but the fencing crew was there and closed off that last couple hundred yards in no time and took a big number of Freaky Fred's deer behind that brand new high fence.

It really was good hunting before that. Would see numerous bucks, bobacats and coyotes daily, hogs every other day and quail all over the place.



No matter how good the lease was, it wasn't worth it. We found out later that landowner hunted our sides all the time when we weren't there..

Same as some on here, problem with locals. They know when you come in and out, and for the most part get too hunt your place more than you. We hunt in East Texas (no surprise there) and have had a couple of problems. First one occured while I was sitting on stand during the late youth hunt passing time while my son and dad deer hunted another place (I had a rifle in case of a hog or varmint I couldn't live without). About good shooting light I heard a vehicle and could hear some talking. Sure enough up through the woods in front of me comes a utility vehicle with 2 men and a kid on it. Your first thought is to be a man and confront them, well I was as scared as a choir girl in the backseat of an old chevy. The thoughts racing through my head (what if I had shot at something and hit one of them, what if my son had been there and shot one of them, what if they had shot one of us on the way in). I didn't say a word or make a move, they went to the house next door loaded the atv and 1 man and the boy left, the other owner of the house went inside. We told my uncle of the incident and also reminded him of the treestand put up not 15 yards in the woods from my box blind. He said he would talk to them. Uncle informed us that they were duck hunting, and that they didn't know anyone was hunting the place BS, we had been there for 2 years and they had to walk or drive by my stand and feeder when they went in. Bottome line is some people think it is their God given right to hunt land they grew up around, and until landowners begin to hold them accountable and back you in pressing charges nothing will happen. It is taking East Texas landowners longer to realize Deer hunting and any other kind they offer is a cash cow. By the way I definately didn't want to get into a gun battle with them, cause if that kid could have shot ducks with the rifle he was holding I knew he could pick me off at 50 yards (remeber it was a youth hunt). Last incident was kind of funny, had a hog hanging in the tree at camp (in a pasture we hunt you can see our blind from trailer) when neighbor pulls in "what'd ya get" Dad replies "what's it look like" knowing the neighbor wasn't being neighborly, rather being nosy. After several minutes of akward silence the neighbor said "well, I was just gonna go down here and run my coonhounds" ON OUR LAND, on second weekend of deer season. My dad replied "I wish you wouldn't were Deer hunting" neighbor "why" Dad "I don't want to burn my tags on your dogs", neighbor slowly started truck and retreated. Aggrevating for sure.