A Reddit user said he was on a public parcel in southern Indiana doing off-season work when the whole thing happened. He wrote that he had gone in to change camera batteries, pull his stand, and put down mineral. The spot was about a half mile from the road on a ridge top, so by the time the encounter started, he was already well back in the woods and alone.
According to the post, two men approached him and opened by asking whether a truck parked off to the side belonged to him. From there, things turned hostile fast. He said one of them started cussing and yelling that nobody wanted him there and that they did not allow hunting back there, even though the land was public. They also accused him of crossing private property to get in. He said that was not true and that he used OnX, knew exactly how he had accessed the parcel, and had not crossed where he was not supposed to.
The men kept piling on. He wrote that one of them threatened twice to tow his truck if he ever saw it there again, even adding, “that’s the least I could do.” They also insisted what he was doing was illegal. According to the post, they told him he could not have a trail camera there, said he was hunting over bait, and claimed they had already reported him. One of them also kept repeating that he had “a choice to make,” which was one of the details that stuck with him afterward.
He said what bothered him most was not only the yelling. It was how the whole thing felt standing there. In the thread, he explained that the calmer of the two men kept one hand in his pocket the entire time. That detail clearly stayed with him. He was outnumbered, half a mile back on public ground, and one of the men was agitated enough to threaten his truck while the other stood there with a hand hidden.
The poster said he stayed calm and did not escalate it, but he also wrote that it was one of those moments that reminded him why he openly carried a sidearm in the woods. He was not saying he drew it or even came close. Later, when someone in the comments asked how a pistol would have helped, he answered that it was two men against one, half a mile into the woods, and nobody was coming to help him if things turned worse. That was how he framed it afterward: not as a fight, but as a situation that felt very different because he was alone and outnumbered.
The comments pushed him strongly in one direction. A lot of people told him to call the game warden and report the encounter. Some said neighboring landowners were clearly trying to scare hunters off public ground. Others said to document everything possible and involve both a game warden and local law enforcement if threats were being made in the woods. Some commenters called it blatant harassment. Others said it sounded like two men angry that they could not effectively box in a public parcel and keep other people out.
There was also practical advice mixed in. One commenter said to track his route to and from the location so he would have date-stamped proof if anyone later tried to claim he crossed private land. Another said that if somebody threatens to call the game warden, the best answer is often to agree and let the law settle it instead of arguing in the timber. But there was pushback on that too, because telling already angry strangers that you are going to report them can make things go sideways faster when you are alone and far from the road.
The poster later updated the thread and said he called DNR the next morning. He eventually spoke with a conservation officer, who told him the encounter sounded like harassment and said he was going to follow up on it. The officer also corrected him on one point: Indiana had changed the law on attractants, so mineral on public land was no longer allowed, even outside the season. So the poster did learn that he had one part of his setup wrong. But even with that correction, the officer still apparently believed the confrontation itself had crossed a line.
The story he told was pretty straightforward. He was on public land doing routine work when two men confronted him, accused him of illegal activity, threatened his truck, and made the whole encounter feel ugly enough that he called DNR the next morning. By the end, he had one answer he did not have when he first posted: the conservation officer thought the confrontation sounded like harassment, even if the poster had not been completely right about every detail of what he was doing out there.
What do you think — if two men cornered you that far back on public ground, would you try to explain yourself at all, or just get out of there and call the game warden later?
Original Reddit post: Always Keep a Sidearm
