ethics? how would you handle this situation?

[HUNTnTAT2]

Took my cousin from North Dakota up to hunt over the weekend. Saturday evening we sat high on a cliff to glass. An hour into glassing a nice black bear pops up in the grassy bottom 100yrds. Running like he stole something. 45minutes later we glass up two nice coues bucks in the same area the bear just ran out of. Rain stopped. Sun showed. Like clock work the bucks pop up to feed for the evening. My cousin plans a nice stalk. Winds in our favor. Bucks are facing the opposite direction slowly feeding. Basically the stars aligned. Hes gettin geared up to stalk and a man and his wife pop out of the bush behind us. They are startled. They set up 30 yrds from us. I whistle the guy over telling him we r about to put a stalk on. He says his boy is gunna start working down the ridge and he doenst want any issues.(from the direction the deer r looking). I asked him about the bear...he had no idea. Meaning they weren't there very long. After I told him we had been there for hours waiting out the rain and bedded bucks which were bedded looking in our direction. He still proceeded to send his son down. GUIDING HIM TO THE BUCKS ON TWO WAY RADIOS(which is illegal. Isnt it?). his son blew the stalk from over 500 yrds. Bucks split the opposite direction his son was coming from. I look over to the guy and he just throws his hands up and shrugs to us like, o well... Now normally I would have been really heated and spoke up. But he had his wife with him. And I didn't wanna leave my cuz w a bad taste for public land hunting in AZ. Is this just a case of public land, name of the game hunting? Or an ethics issue? Or am I just being a crybaby? Look forward to hearing some other opinions.

[ctafoya]

Thats a case of he is an A$$hole. It hurts to say it but you did the right thing not beating him in front of his family and yours.

[HUNTnTAT2]

Here is the bigger of the two bucks

[Scooter]

Them's the brakes. Just a case of "Barney" finding your spot and spotting the same deer. You have a right to be mad, but to a point. There's no guarantee you were gonna 100% harvest the deer, so unless they shot that buck right from under your nose you still would have had the deck stacked against you- they just tipped the odds in the deer's favor. Now, the two way radio thing? Yeah, that is kinda wrong but you and I both know pretty much every Barney does that these days with radios. Until there is some kind of enforcement that will not change.

[HUNTnTAT2]

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[gotcoues]

Enforcement? Radios are perfectly legal in the use of stalking game. The record books will not accept animal where electronic devises were used, IE radios or even rangefinders I believe.

 

Definitely a bad break for you guys though. Hopefully next time you'll have a good buck to yourself.

[sherman]

If someone did that to me I would have sent my cuz anyway then beat the hello out of him. There's a lot of hunters that are rude and don't give a crap about anyone but themselves. That's what I would have done. Or jumped him for being an $#it head.

[Scooter]

Enforcement? Radios are perfectly legal in the use of stalking game. The record books will not accept animal where electronic devises were used, IE radios or even rangefinders I believe.

 

Definitely a bad break for you guys though. Hopefully next time you'll have a good buck to yourself.

 

Forgot... Yeah not illegal, just won't land you in the P&Y-

[bigorange]

Yeah he's a jerk...but you did the right thing. Good job.

[PRDATR]

You did the right thing by not making a big deal out of it.

[43F]

I would have addressed this guy's wife and child. More than likely the child would have recently taken a hunter safety course and I would have tried to appeal to the child's sense of ethics given the unethical nature of his father's actions. I then would let his wife know the poor example her husband is setting for her son. An example that if replicated on a lesser person may lead to a physical confrontation that would put her son at risk. Finally, an eye for an eye, I would have ruined his hunt by spooking the deer.

I understand that hunting on public land is for everyone and have run into other hunters in the field, but not one hunter has ever acted like this bhole If they had come from a different direction and happened to see the same deer that is one thing. heck in that type of situation I would go so far as to help the other hunter if they truely had a better opportunity than I, and then put myself in a position to take advantage of any mistake that may send the deer in my direction. But this guy basically walked up on you, sat down next to you, looked in the direction you were glassing, found the deer you were glassing, and decided to move on the deer.

I'd like to see how that would go if I tried to do that this weekend to someone. And I'm not walking the hunting area with a child and wife.

[desertbowhunter]

If it were me and some one had been on the bucks I would of actually just sat there and enjoyed the the show. But it is public land and competition is just part of the game. We had a situation a couple years ago on a muzzleloader hunt where we glassed up a nice 4x4 muley, right as the sun was coming up and a group of guys on a ranger stopped about 100 yards from us and started glassing towards where we were glassing and spotted the same buck. It then became a foot race to the buck. Our hunter and there hunter ended up missing the buck. I was heated on the way to the buck, and half way there I told myself its public land and that's what we get for glassing from the road. So I just calmed down and enjoyed the stalk. After the hunters missed, the other hunters confronted us and told us to get the heck out of there because that was there spot and they had spotted that buck the night before, so it was there buck. After some not so friendly words were exchanged and we went our separate ways, I realized we both thought we had rights to the buck, but like I said public land is public land and we all have the same rights to the game. Now ethics is a whole other story. All we can do is hunt hard and get away from people whenever possible. Good luck! Maybe you guys will find some bigger bucks. Everything happens for a reason.

 

[wildwoody]

yes radio's are legal. sometimes you need to get moving fast with your stalk, i would of moved on them there deer and let the cards fall were they may, you can't expect all the jerks out there to respect your hunt . and the wife , the heck with her she's no better. and the kid he will grow up just like his dad. voice your opinion she probably allready nows he's an as''loe. it happens all the time

[reganranch]

My response to that prick wanting to move in on those deer, if I were in that same situation.

 

[PRDATR]

There are always going to be those who place more value on the outcome of the hunt than the overall experience. I was guilty of this when I first started hunting deer. Back then it was all about killing my first deer and there were a few years before I succeeded.

I didn't know anyone who hunted so it was all about reading books, magazines and just walking around. To me deer were just things to kill, soulless targets with hair and antlers.

That first buck, a spike Mule Deer taken near Cottonwood Camp in the Superstitions was a lot of work. I had not much more than a rifle, sleeping bag and an old two wheel drive Chevy truck.

After tracking the deer I hung it in a small tree in the wash where it died. I had tied a rope around it and ran it up over a branch and struggled to get it up off the ground. I grabbed the deer around the chest with my right arm and lifted the deer while pulling the rope with my left hand then stepping on the rope to keep it from slipping back.

I carried the gutted deer on my shoulders about 100 yards to the truck then drove home where I butchered it on the kitchen table, before my wife got home.

I'v now managed to kill a few more deer, each one a memory and I now understand that each one has a spirit and is a gift.

Sorry for being so long winded.