Deer hunting alone in the North Maine Woods, I parked the truck at the entrance to an old, partially grown logging road that snaked through open hardwoods. It looked inviting.
It was a typical November morning in the big woods, cold and frosty, with the promise of a freshening wind as the sun worked its way above the salmon-colored horizon. After a 10-minute stalk on this tote road, an unusual sight caught my attention.
Off to the right, not far from the road, was a spanking-new plywood deer blind built up on a two-by-four support structure. It would be best described as a “shooter’s shack.” In the conventional sense, it wasn’t a portable stand. Freshly painted, it was strategically situated adjacent to what looked like a funnel for deer on the move.
Curious, I walked closer. The wind was picking up, increasing the chill factor. I pulled my orange stocking cap snug around my head and neck. For a moment, I stood at the bottom rung of the stout ladder leading up to the structure.
“This construction is excellent,” I thought to myself. Hmm.
There was no padlock on the door, just a latch with a twig holding it shut. “I’ll just have a look-see inside.” Swinging open the door, I beheld an inviting, clean cubicle complete with a chair and a seat pillow, and a shooting window that dropped open on a pulley rig.
The inside beckoned me like a seductress with arched eyebrows and ruby lips. A gust of wind caught the open door, and I stepped up another rung to find a purchase so I could hold the door against the wind.
“Just for a minute,” I assured myself, and stepped in and sat down out of the wind in the plastic chair. “Oooo, this is some comfy,” I said out loud. For about 30 minutes, I luxuriated in someone else’s well-crafted domain. Then I began to have second thoughts about being there at all and decided to get out and back into the woods.
Backing my way cautiously down the shack ladder, as any old man would, I caught an out-of-place smell — a noxious whiff of cigarette smoke — and at the same moment heard a gruff voice shout from behind me.
“What the #$%! are you doing in my stand?”
He was a middle-aged guy with a weather-beaten face and a cigarette dangling from his lips, attired in an orange sweatshirt and unlaced boots. He continued to utter profanities and berate me.
I have not been chewed out with such intense vitriol since my weeks at Navy boot camp. I tried to apologize, but he was not to be placated or calmed down. The verbal beating continued as I strapped on my day pack. As I made my exit, his stream of condemnation toward me included a snarky comment about me “writing about this in the Northwoods Sporting Journal.”
As I headed back to my truck, the angry man, who was carrying a rifle, which I assumed was loaded, walked ahead of me and continued his stream of invective. Normally, when braced like this, there is a limit to just how much verbal abuse I will take. I tend to stand up for myself and talk back — but not when both parties are armed with high-powered rifles. I bit my tongue, for I was in the wrong.
I got what I deserved, right? Is it an ethical or legal issue? Or is it both?
If I find a hunter in my tree stand, I don’t get all torqued up and curse him out. I tell him it’s my stand and “my turn, Bud.” In all my years in the deer woods, there has never been a confrontation of any kind over tree stands.
A game warden tells me that if you come upon a tree stand, no matter how inviting, it is a form of trespass to use it if the stand is legally labeled with the owner’s name, address and phone number.
Big buck hunter Hal Blood, who never sits in tree stands, believes that another guy’s tree stand is sacred, not only because it is his property, but because he went to some work to find a good strategic location. Using another guy’s stand “is cheating,” Blood says.
Views on this issue differ, even among seasoned guides and woodsmen. However, there does seem to be consensus in one area: If a hunter does come upon a tree stand that is obviously abandoned or not legally labeled with the owner’s name and address, using it should not get you in any trouble.
As for my shooter-shack transgression, I have not disclosed the whole story. There is an amusing conclusion, the revealing of which could possibly invite recrimination or an act of revenge.
I have learned a new lesson for the deer woods. Even in my advanced years, it is one I will not soon forget.