The bowhunter was not sneaking around someone’s backyard.
He was on a hunting lease, sitting in a blind that had been there for months, watching over a food plot his group had planted. From his side of the story, he had every reason to believe he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Then a man came onto the property with a gun.
In a Reddit post, the hunter said the encounter happened while he was bowhunting their lease in early November 2022. According to the details shared in the thread, the man trespassed onto the leased property and pointed a rifle at him for several minutes.
That is the kind of sentence that makes every other detail feel heavier.
A bowhunter in a blind is already in a strange position during a confrontation. He is tucked away, trying to stay quiet, usually focused on wind, deer movement, and not getting busted. He is not expecting another person to walk in and turn the whole setup into a threat situation. And during bow season, depending on local rules, he may not even have a firearm with him.
The hunter said he was about 50 feet from the other man’s property line, inside the lease, in a blind overlooking the food plot. He also said the windows facing the man’s property were closed. That detail mattered because the man apparently told police a very different version of events.
According to the hunter, the man claimed he had been stalking his kids through a tent on his property.
That is where the whole thing takes on a weird, ugly edge. If the hunter’s account is accurate, this was not simply a neighbor yelling about a boundary. It was someone walking onto the leased hunting ground, pointing a gun, and then trying to frame the bowhunter as the dangerous one.
The hunter said he tried to press charges, but the prosecuting attorney did not think there was enough evidence. That had to be maddening. From his point of view, he had video, he had been held at gunpoint, and he had been on land he was allowed to hunt. But apparently, the evidence still did not cross whatever line the prosecutor needed.
And then it got worse.
A year later, according to the information shared in the thread, the hunter’s brother went out to hunt the lease. The same neighbor allegedly saw him walking to his stand, which was more than 150 yards from the property line. Then the man started firing into the thicket.
The hunter said bullets were whizzing under his brother’s stand for more than an hour.
That is hard to even sit with for a second. A man is in a stand, wearing orange, trying not to get hit while someone nearby keeps shooting into the area below him. The brother reportedly waved his orange hat, trying to make himself known. The shooting still continued.
Then the brother yelled that this was the same man who had held his brother at gunpoint the year before and that police were on the way. According to the post, the man then trespassed onto the property and taunted him by asking if he was afraid to talk to “the guy with the gun.”
At that point, staying in the stand may have been the safest option. It sounds backwards, but if rounds are moving through the thicket and the person shooting is angry, climbing down and walking into that mess could be worse. So the brother stayed put.
The family said they could no longer safely hunt about half of the lease because of the man’s behavior. That is one of the parts that gets lost in the drama of the gunpoint moment. A hunting lease costs money. Food plots cost money. Time off, stands, blinds, cameras, and season prep all add up. But once someone next door starts threatening hunters or firing near stands, the land may as well be unusable in that section.
The hunter later said he was escalating the issue to state police and getting a civil standby from local police and DNR so law enforcement could escort him to post no trespassing signs along the property line. That was probably the most practical move left. If local authorities were not acting on the earlier incident, then having them present while signs were posted at least created a clear record that the boundary was marked and the leaseholders were trying to handle it legally.
What makes the story so frustrating is that the hunters appeared to be trying to go through the proper channels while the other man kept escalating. They were not describing a disagreement over one wounded deer or a bad map app. They were describing a neighbor who allegedly came armed onto leased land, held a bowhunter at gunpoint, later fired into cover near another hunter’s stand, and still somehow left the hunters feeling like nobody in authority was willing to step in hard enough.
That is the kind of situation that makes people stop enjoying their own lease.
A hunting spot is supposed to make you watch for deer, not watch the property line wondering if the neighbor is going to show up with a rifle again.
What Commenters Said
Commenters were furious, and most of them did not treat this like a normal neighbor dispute.
Several people told the hunter to contact the person who leased them the property and make sure the landowner knew exactly what was happening. If paying hunters can no longer safely use part of the lease, that becomes the landowner’s problem too, not just the hunters’ problem.
Others said police and game wardens needed to be involved because trespassing with a gun and threatening a legal hunter was far beyond ordinary hunter harassment. One commenter who identified himself as a game warden said he had handled hunter harassment cases for much milder situations, but he also noted the facts mattered: the lease had to be legal, the hunters had to be on the correct property, and the armed man could not actually be the landowner.
A lot of commenters were stunned that authorities had not taken stronger action. Some said the hunter should keep escalating to state police, DNR leadership, local news, or civil court if needed. Others suggested a restraining order, more cameras, posted signs, and law enforcement present at the property line.
There was also a lot of bad internet bravado in the comments, with people saying what they would have done if someone pointed a gun at them. But one commenter who had been through a similar armed property confrontation pushed back on that mindset. He said it is easy for people outside the situation to talk tough, but in the moment, the most important thing is getting home alive.
That may have been the most grounded point in the whole thread.
The hunter’s group wanted justice, but they also wanted to keep hunting without someone threatening them. Commenters agreed that the situation needed a paper trail, law enforcement involvement, and pressure on the right agencies before someone got hurt.
