A Reddit user said he and a buddy, both police officers, were hunting public land in Texas at a new spot they had picked because they were seeing a lot of deer activity there. According to his comment in the thread, it was not some roadside setup where help was close. He said they had walked about two hours from the truck, were both bowhunting out of tripods, and were wearing full-body ghillie suits. He also noted that the area only allowed bowhunting, which mattered a lot once the wrong person showed up.
He wrote that about an hour after sunrise, a random man started walking toward them carrying a bolt-action rifle and smoking a cigarette. From the way he told it, the guy was not creeping through the brush like someone who was lost and trying to get his bearings. He was coming straight into an archery-only area with the wrong weapon in his hands. The poster said the man got to within about 40 yards of him before he took off his headgear and let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he was not supposed to be there like that.
Instead of backing off, the stranger walked even closer. Then the encounter went from bad to crazy. The hunter said the man pointed the rifle at him, and he added a detail that made the whole thing even worse: the rifle was a .30-06 and already had one round chambered. That meant this was not just a guy carrying the wrong gun in the wrong place. According to the poster, this was a man close enough to talk to, holding a loaded rifle on him while he sat there in a tripod in full ghillie.
What the armed stranger did not realize, the poster said, was that he was not alone. His buddy was set up off to his left and had not been noticed. The second hunter was already at full draw with a bow, using what the poster described as a very heavy arrow tipped with a very sharp broadhead. The poster told the rifleman to look over, and he said you could see the fear in the man’s eyes the moment he realized he was not the only one with a weapon aimed and ready.
From there, the whole balance shifted fast. The man lowered the rifle. The poster said that in an instant both he and his buddy had their handguns out and the rifleman at gunpoint. They zip-tied him, called the game warden, and held him there until authorities met them back at the trucks. The way he told it, the entire walk out was dead silent. He said the man did not say a word the whole time.
Then came the part that pushed the story from a wild hunting encounter into something much bigger. According to the post, once authorities ran the man’s name, they found two murder warrants on him, one out of Louisiana and one out of Kentucky. The poster added that about a year later, the man was sentenced to life in prison. And then, because hunting stories have a way of turning absurd at the end, he said he and his buddy went back to their tripods and both killed deer that same day.
So the story he told was about as unbelievable as they come: two officers two hours back in public land, bowhunting in ghillie suits, an armed man with a cigarette and a chambered .30-06 walking into an archery-only area, the rifle coming up, a hidden partner already at full draw, zip ties going on, the game warden meeting them at the trucks, and the discovery that the stranger they had just held at gunpoint was wanted for two murders.
What do you think — if a stranger carrying a chambered rifle walked into an archery-only area and pointed it at you two hours from the truck, would you trust yourself to stay calm enough to do what these two did?
Original Reddit post: What are some scary stories you have from hunting or being in the woods?
