Hunter says the neighbor’s stand sits right on the property line — and someone from that side already “accidentally” shot a deer onto his side

A hunter in r/Hunting said he and his neighbors were split by a north-south boundary line, with his property on the south side and the neighbors on the north. The problem was not that the neighbor hunted. It was where the stand was. He said their tree stand sat right on the property line, and he was already carrying some bad feelings about it because, according to the post, one of the neighbor’s friends had already “accidentally” shot a deer onto his side. He said he felt like the stand owner was probably within his rights, but also admitted it felt like the kind of setup that was asking for trouble.

When people started replying, the hunter added more detail that made it easier to picture. He said the stand mostly faced back onto the neighbor’s property, but it was “a hair cocked” toward the west and had a swivel chair. He said there was some nice clearing there too, which was exactly why he was uneasy. He was not saying the guy had the stand turned fully into his side, but he clearly did not like the idea that somebody sitting there had enough angle to be tempted by anything moving across that line.

The way he told it, he was not against being reasonable. In one reply, he said if they shot a deer on their own side and it ran across the line onto his place, he had no problem with them coming over to recover it. That was not the issue. The issue was the idea of taking the shot in the wrong direction to begin with. That is what seemed to bother him most. He even said he was thinking about putting up a camera and some fencing, partly so he could see what was actually happening and partly to discourage traffic.

The comments did not exactly make him feel crazy for being bothered. One person told him that if the neighbor was actually shooting across the property line, it was poaching, probably trespassing, and could be dangerous. Another said setting a stand right on the line was rude in the first place, especially if it gave the hunter any kind of shooting lane into someone else’s land. Another commenter put it even more plainly: if the stand is on the line and it faces any direction other than away from the line and back into their own property, then they are in the wrong.

A few guys in the thread said they had fence-line stands too, but they made a point of keeping their backs to the neighbor’s side and never shooting behind them. One hunter said he had even passed on a nice buck at 25 yards because the deer was not on property he was allowed to hunt. Another said that when he shot a deer during muzzleloader season and it ran across the line before dying, he still contacted the property owner before going to get it. That part of the thread had a different tone. It was not about whose stand sat where. It was about the fact that most hunters know exactly where the line is and what kind of choices keep you out of trouble.

The man who started the thread never turned it into some screaming match. He sounded more like somebody standing there looking at a setup he already did not trust, with a past incident in the back of his mind, and wondering if he was being unreasonable for thinking it looked bad. The comments did not leave much doubt about how a lot of hunters saw it. A stand on the property line is one thing. A stand on the property line with a history of a deer already being “accidentally” shot across it feels like something else.