A Reddit user said he went back to check one of his stands and found something he never expected to see hanging there: a trail camera that did not belong to him. According to the post, the camera had been attached directly to his stand, which meant somebody had not only trespassed onto the property but had physically climbed into or onto his setup to put it there. That was what made the whole thing feel so invasive right away. This was not a hunter cutting across a fence line or slipping through a corner of the timber. Somebody had gone straight to his stand and treated it like their own place to scout from.
He wrote that once he found the camera, he pulled the card and started looking through it. That was when the story got even stranger. The images apparently included the trespasser himself. From the way the thread was described, the camera had effectively documented the person who set it up, giving the stand owner exactly the kind of proof people usually wish they had after the fact. Instead of finding a setup and wondering who had been there, he suddenly had a camera full of evidence left behind by the person who crossed the line.
The post made it clear he was trying to figure out what the smartest next step was. He had not just found trespassing signs. He had found gear left on his stand and, apparently, photos that could identify who put it there. In the comments, people told him to stop thinking of it as a private argument and start treating it like evidence. A lot of the advice was to save the card contents, document where the camera was found, and take everything straight to the game warden. Others told him not to tamper with more than he had to and not to get baited into waiting at the stand for a confrontation.
Some of the replies also pointed out how bold the trespasser had been. It is one thing to set a camera near a property edge and hope no one notices. It is another thing to walk all the way to someone else’s stand, attach your own camera to it, and leave it there long enough for the actual stand owner to find it. That was part of what made the story stand out. The trespasser was not being subtle. He was acting like he had every right to use someone else’s setup as part of his own hunt plan.
The thread turned into a discussion about how often trespassers accidentally create the evidence that gets them caught. Some commenters said this was exactly why they check any strange camera they find before doing anything else, because people leave behind more proof than they realize. Others said this was the kind of case game wardens tend to care about, because the camera was not just left somewhere on the property. It was attached directly to a stand, which made it harder for anyone to argue it was an innocent mistake.
The story itself was pretty simple and ugly in the way a lot of good Avid stories are. A hunter returned to his stand, found a stranger’s camera attached to it, pulled the card, and realized the trespasser may have handed him the proof on his own. Instead of a guessing game, he suddenly had a real decision to make about whether to confront the person, hand it off to the warden, or let the evidence do the talking.
Original Reddit post: Trespasser put camera on my stand
What do you think — if you found a trespasser’s camera hanging on your stand and the card appeared to identify him, would you go straight to the game warden, or wait and see if he came back for it?
