I have a story about last year. My buddy and i hunted down SW with a friend that wanted to help us out. I got a deer opening day near dark a decent spike. Lucky, to say the least. My buddy did not get one, so in an effort to help him while he worked his 9-5 job, i went and scouted a few areas since i work graveyard. Found a very promising spot mid week, and was even fortunate enough to see a 2 point with eye guards. This was in a clear cut, a mile behind a locked gate and it was mid season. We made a plan and went for it that Saturday morning. Showed up at "the spot" at 5am to ensure beating everyone else. 6-8 cars came and went between about 6 and 6.30am, seemingly since we were already there. As we were getting ready to hike in, another car pulled up, and didn't leave. They parked their truck, and got ready in a hurry and started walking in. In a low voice i said, "hey, we were here first, wait and walk in with us or walk in behind us."
The older guy said, "no we'll be quick and just get to our spot on the other side of the cut." Right... walk in quick, spook all the deer, stay an hour and then leave, completely screwing us. I was pretty livid, especially when upon meeting them when we hadn't even made it down to our spot because we were going slow, he said he spooked at least 3 deer on the way in. I asked him if he'd ever shot a deer before. He said "no, we just come here to have some father son time, but it would nice to get one one of these days." I just said "if you really want to get one, at least learn what not to do... like spook them all before shooting light." and just walked away.
Most people don't mean to be a holes, they just don't know how to hunt. They haven't done the research or the scouting and they are lazy. That's why i said 3 miles or more in this year, before anyone can jump ahead of me and spook my deer. If this story helps anyone not be that guy, i'm happy, but we missed a legit shot at getting my buddy a deer last year because of it.
