EatBugs
Member
I'm sure all of us non hunting land owners and even those asking neighbors to expand hunting land have experienced this... When you're going around asking for hunting land and someone feels the need to do more than just say "no"
Well, I had an interesting thing happen yesterday that I just have to share....
Sooo, my hunting buddy and I are scouting and asking landowners for possible hunting rights....
But first some background on our little scouting party yesterday... I'm a woman(white, Blonde, blue eyed, 5'3", late 20's.... ok so I turn 30 on saturday....soft voiced....nicely dressed, in other words not very threatening looking) My friend(not my boyfriend) is a Man(Black,short-5'0", early 30's, well spoken, nicely dressed)... We have his 8 yr old son(visiting daddy for a month) in the car and we are also trying to teach him how to spot deer in the fields while going 20 to 50 mph(surprisingly hard for a beginner apparently) Knowing that we are in the countryside where unfortunately a lot of narrow minded and racist people live.... I was the one doing the driving and talking while my friend and his son stayed back a ways and came forward if the people were friendly and wanted to talk. So far we have one yes, a few maybes, a majority of sorry but we let someone else/family only hunt but thanks for asking first, and a couple abrupt no's with a door slam.... The vast majority of people were tickled pink have someone to talk to and would not let us leave....
So anyways.... I pull up to a house and a huge dog runs up barking and growling... I know dogs and a probably also because I'm non threatening, the dog and I become good buddies... so then after making peace with the dog I go the door and knock... an elderly man answers and I can see that I'm making him nervous so I apologize for bothering him quickly explain why I'm knocking on his door, and leave.... The whole time the dog is basking in the attention of my friend and his son.....this is the house where we think the whole chain of events started...
We go to another house where we talk to a couple of guys and we got along great... They said no to us hunting their land but wanted my friends number because the guy wanted my friend to join him on his land sometime when we goes hunting(but not me
)... We also find out the older man was his grandfather... He then gave the two of us some leads and told us to use his name as a reference...
So pulling out of his driveway I look over and notice a fancy pt cruiser at the grandfathers and said "oh look he has visitors" (I'm foreshadowing in a way here).... so we go to follow up on one of the leads but nobody was home... pulling out we saw the the same fancy pt cruiser(we mostly took notice because his son really likes pt cruisers and kept pointing it out to our annoyance) barreling onto the road.... by this time we conclude that its starting to get late and we'll spend the rest of the day showing his son all the deer in the fields...
As we are cruising along this red car is behind us... we are going pretty slow and pointing at deer so we try turning off on another road to get out of their way but they are still behind us... a couple turns later and we start to get suspicious... so we pull over onto some ones long driveway to let them pass... They pull in behind us and a rather large old man steps out... My friend steps out to see if anything is wrong....
The man yells "are you lost?!" my friend replies.."No, are you following us?" The man says yes and starts to cuss violently... At this point I can't tell you his exact wording but it went along the lines of and in more words "you people" and "your type" can't just drive around and knock on peoples doors and ask them about hunting... I was slack jawed at this point because I have never heard such racial innuendos and hateful sounding people outside of tv or movies... Then the man tells my friend that him and his friends will beat him up and that he is going to get killed... At this point my friends son and I are staring out the window with wide eyes and mouths open in astonishment... My friend having been in law enforcement and is currently in the military proceeds to tell the man that there is a woman and child in the car , that the man is in the wrong, go ahead and try to hurt or kill him, and a few other words about his rights (this whole time my friend never said a cuss word, never does in front of me or his son) The man gets scared and runs back to his car because my friend stood up for himself and ideals, wasn't scared and didn't back down to his threats... at this time I would like to point out that while they both screamed at each other the only threatening thing I heard my friend say was along the lines of go ahead and try it when the man made physical threats against him... I would also like to point out that my friend is definitely not a saint by any means and reacted stronger than I ever would have...
So when the man retreated we wrote down his tags and called the police to report that we had been chased down and threatened... We made arrangements to meet the officer at a small store and wait there... just a few minutes later and man shows up in an unmarked car with no uniform, a huge nasty wad of chew in his lip and flashes his badge. He seemed oddly surprised that we were waiting for him... He make our complaint the whole time the man in the red pt cruiser is circling the area like a creep and we kept pointing him out to the officer who just rolled his eyes... The officer then tells us that we should stay out because we were not welcomed here, tells us some other shady stuff, dismisses our complaints and tells us that he is surprised we haven't been shot and killed yet(his is mostly referring to my friend who is out of the car and doing all the talking) there is really no way for me to get across in words the slimy, disgusting, good ol' boy network feeling that this officer was giving me or get across the racial innuendos he was flinging my friends way... We eventually went home with a bad taste in our mouth...
an hour later an officer calls my friend and asks why he is not at the meeting place! The guy who basically ran us off was not the officer responding to the call... So we have the real responding officer come to my place where we make our official complaint not only against the man but against the officer as well, per the responding officers recommendation.... She(the responding officer) was not surprised about the threatening man but was appalled at what the other officer said and we also found out he was working outside of his jurisdiction...
And that's my crazy story.... I think I included all the pertinent facts
I would like to make these notes....
The officer and man made other nasty comments that I didn't mention because I just can't remember exactly(think I was in some kind of shock), some too crude to repeat, and the story would be waaaaay toooo long...
I am really not surprised that we had someone react so negatively and violently towards us, I'm just surprised in how exactly it happened...ie being chased down and then the nasty cop...all with a woman and child in car(that fact is what enraged my friend the most, that all this happened in front of us) If we were met at the door with with a shotgun and nasty threats... we would of just left.... its the fact that some guy chased us down in a car on public roads and made death threats...
---this is the reason why myself and others are many times too afraid to ask landowners---
I would of handled the situation and reacted differently than my friend(would of still stood up for myself but just ... differently....)
While we did have this bad interaction.... Most of the people were friendly and wonderful and we made some new friends(they aren't going to let us hunt but we still got along great and exchanged contact info)
We plan to avoid that area in the future and just work on the leads we have and then just be thankful for what we have gotten so far.... although a part of me wants to go back in the area and continue asking just to spite them
....
I'm not ranting or anything like that... just retelling an interesting thing that happened... land hunters I would love to hear similar stories.... Land owners, I would love to hear stories of interesting ways people have asked to hunt your land.... I once came up to a landowner and began with Hi I'm here to solve all you deer overpopulation problems... he is the one yes that I got... told me to shoot as many deer as I can
Well, I had an interesting thing happen yesterday that I just have to share....
Sooo, my hunting buddy and I are scouting and asking landowners for possible hunting rights....
But first some background on our little scouting party yesterday... I'm a woman(white, Blonde, blue eyed, 5'3", late 20's.... ok so I turn 30 on saturday....soft voiced....nicely dressed, in other words not very threatening looking) My friend(not my boyfriend) is a Man(Black,short-5'0", early 30's, well spoken, nicely dressed)... We have his 8 yr old son(visiting daddy for a month) in the car and we are also trying to teach him how to spot deer in the fields while going 20 to 50 mph(surprisingly hard for a beginner apparently) Knowing that we are in the countryside where unfortunately a lot of narrow minded and racist people live.... I was the one doing the driving and talking while my friend and his son stayed back a ways and came forward if the people were friendly and wanted to talk. So far we have one yes, a few maybes, a majority of sorry but we let someone else/family only hunt but thanks for asking first, and a couple abrupt no's with a door slam.... The vast majority of people were tickled pink have someone to talk to and would not let us leave....
So anyways.... I pull up to a house and a huge dog runs up barking and growling... I know dogs and a probably also because I'm non threatening, the dog and I become good buddies... so then after making peace with the dog I go the door and knock... an elderly man answers and I can see that I'm making him nervous so I apologize for bothering him quickly explain why I'm knocking on his door, and leave.... The whole time the dog is basking in the attention of my friend and his son.....this is the house where we think the whole chain of events started...
We go to another house where we talk to a couple of guys and we got along great... They said no to us hunting their land but wanted my friends number because the guy wanted my friend to join him on his land sometime when we goes hunting(but not me
)... We also find out the older man was his grandfather... He then gave the two of us some leads and told us to use his name as a reference...So pulling out of his driveway I look over and notice a fancy pt cruiser at the grandfathers and said "oh look he has visitors" (I'm foreshadowing in a way here).... so we go to follow up on one of the leads but nobody was home... pulling out we saw the the same fancy pt cruiser(we mostly took notice because his son really likes pt cruisers and kept pointing it out to our annoyance) barreling onto the road.... by this time we conclude that its starting to get late and we'll spend the rest of the day showing his son all the deer in the fields...
As we are cruising along this red car is behind us... we are going pretty slow and pointing at deer so we try turning off on another road to get out of their way but they are still behind us... a couple turns later and we start to get suspicious... so we pull over onto some ones long driveway to let them pass... They pull in behind us and a rather large old man steps out... My friend steps out to see if anything is wrong....
The man yells "are you lost?!" my friend replies.."No, are you following us?" The man says yes and starts to cuss violently... At this point I can't tell you his exact wording but it went along the lines of and in more words "you people" and "your type" can't just drive around and knock on peoples doors and ask them about hunting... I was slack jawed at this point because I have never heard such racial innuendos and hateful sounding people outside of tv or movies... Then the man tells my friend that him and his friends will beat him up and that he is going to get killed... At this point my friends son and I are staring out the window with wide eyes and mouths open in astonishment... My friend having been in law enforcement and is currently in the military proceeds to tell the man that there is a woman and child in the car , that the man is in the wrong, go ahead and try to hurt or kill him, and a few other words about his rights (this whole time my friend never said a cuss word, never does in front of me or his son) The man gets scared and runs back to his car because my friend stood up for himself and ideals, wasn't scared and didn't back down to his threats... at this time I would like to point out that while they both screamed at each other the only threatening thing I heard my friend say was along the lines of go ahead and try it when the man made physical threats against him... I would also like to point out that my friend is definitely not a saint by any means and reacted stronger than I ever would have...
So when the man retreated we wrote down his tags and called the police to report that we had been chased down and threatened... We made arrangements to meet the officer at a small store and wait there... just a few minutes later and man shows up in an unmarked car with no uniform, a huge nasty wad of chew in his lip and flashes his badge. He seemed oddly surprised that we were waiting for him... He make our complaint the whole time the man in the red pt cruiser is circling the area like a creep and we kept pointing him out to the officer who just rolled his eyes... The officer then tells us that we should stay out because we were not welcomed here, tells us some other shady stuff, dismisses our complaints and tells us that he is surprised we haven't been shot and killed yet(his is mostly referring to my friend who is out of the car and doing all the talking) there is really no way for me to get across in words the slimy, disgusting, good ol' boy network feeling that this officer was giving me or get across the racial innuendos he was flinging my friends way... We eventually went home with a bad taste in our mouth...
an hour later an officer calls my friend and asks why he is not at the meeting place! The guy who basically ran us off was not the officer responding to the call... So we have the real responding officer come to my place where we make our official complaint not only against the man but against the officer as well, per the responding officers recommendation.... She(the responding officer) was not surprised about the threatening man but was appalled at what the other officer said and we also found out he was working outside of his jurisdiction...
And that's my crazy story.... I think I included all the pertinent facts
I would like to make these notes....
The officer and man made other nasty comments that I didn't mention because I just can't remember exactly(think I was in some kind of shock), some too crude to repeat, and the story would be waaaaay toooo long...
I am really not surprised that we had someone react so negatively and violently towards us, I'm just surprised in how exactly it happened...ie being chased down and then the nasty cop...all with a woman and child in car(that fact is what enraged my friend the most, that all this happened in front of us) If we were met at the door with with a shotgun and nasty threats... we would of just left.... its the fact that some guy chased us down in a car on public roads and made death threats...
---this is the reason why myself and others are many times too afraid to ask landowners---
I would of handled the situation and reacted differently than my friend(would of still stood up for myself but just ... differently....)
While we did have this bad interaction.... Most of the people were friendly and wonderful and we made some new friends(they aren't going to let us hunt but we still got along great and exchanged contact info)
We plan to avoid that area in the future and just work on the leads we have and then just be thankful for what we have gotten so far.... although a part of me wants to go back in the area and continue asking just to spite them
....I'm not ranting or anything like that... just retelling an interesting thing that happened... land hunters I would love to hear similar stories.... Land owners, I would love to hear stories of interesting ways people have asked to hunt your land.... I once came up to a landowner and began with Hi I'm here to solve all you deer overpopulation problems...
he is the one yes that I got... told me to shoot as many deer as I can
