What a nightmare of an opening day of firearms season that I had. It involved a trespasser and a tiny sliver of landlocked land that butts up to one of my farms. I've hunted my ground (owned by a relative) for 25+ years and have respected this land locked sliver. Somehow some twenty something punk got permission for the land locked sliver and after asking all of the surrounding land owners for permission to access it, he convinced one land owner who has about 10' of land that butts up to it. So at sunrise on Saturday, I could see his orange hat. 45 minutes into the morning, I hear "BOOM". I sat there and watched him get down and eventually start making the LONG drag through the woods and swamps to get back to his 10' wide access point. I decided to get down and go to a totally different spot on my property since I knew that portion was a bust. Part of that trip had me paralleling the sliver. I looked down in my field and see fresh boot tracks, so my walk not turned into a human tracking job. Finally I get to were I can see him, still in his sliver of ground. He waived to me, I waived to him, and then he invited me to see his deer. I greeted him half way and we had a nice conversation, which at one point I asked if those where his boot tracks in my field. He admitted that he walked my field in the dark to easier access his stand deep down the sliver and not disturb any deer in there. I politely (not normal for me) explained how that is trespassing and how I had respected that sliver of land all of these many years and that I expected the same from him. He said he understood an apologized. He then took me to see his deer, a beautiful 140 class 8 pointer ... I wanted to throw up, but I had to be the bigger man and I congratulated him. I even took photos for him with his iPhone. We talked for a while and he told me he wasn't looking forward to the long drag. I told him that I was going to go to another area of my property and get some hunting in since the morning was still early and told him to be safe.

Well ... no sooner was I out of sight it turns out, he drug the un-gutted buck up the hill in the sliver and into my field. He proceeded to gut the deer in my field. Then he walked the some 1/2 mile to his 10' wide access point and across the neighbor's land who gave him access, to get his Kia Forte car. He drives the car through the neighbor's hay field, through the 10' wide opening, approximately 1/2 mile through my picked bean field, loads up his deer in the truck, and then proceeds at that point to slide the car down a hill in my field where it came to rest in a muddy bottom draw right next to one of my treestands. All while I was only 300 yards or so away in a spot where I could not see what was going on. He apparently screwed around for hours helplessly trying to get his car moved but just made it worse. I've never seen a car buried like this ... LOL. Finally at about 1:00 he called me (the neighbor who gave him access also gave him my number) and told me that he had gotten stuck on my land and needed a tractor to get him out. You can imagine how my afternoon went from there. It consisted of law enforcement, multiple land owners, tractors, mud, and me. Sadly, none of the land owners wanted to press charges, though they all had rights to do so. My day was screwed. He had taken a great buck out of the local herd. But he was told by all of the landowners involved that he is never allowed back to cross into that sliver of land. So moving forward no one can access this small parcel that has sat there as a sanctuary for the 25 years that I have been hunting that property.