I am not sure if he is a member on here or if he will read this but I just wanted to thank a fellow sportsman/hunter for what happened this weekend. Basically to make a very long story short, I was best friend's with this guy's son for many years and we duck hunted together off and on. We would always share intel with each other about what we were seeing and where the birds were at. After a series of miscommunications and so on, we had a HUGE falling out that lead to some serious bad blood between not only the two of us, but also his son and I. This was a few years ago and we hadn't spoken since. I was out hunting this weekend, trying to get my girlfriend a few ducks since it is her first year of hunting. I had scouted many other spots and none were holding birds and the spot that I took her, though public, was a spot that he had showed me many years back. We got our there, set up and were relaxing when he showed up with his son and another guy to hunt. Initially there was a lot of yelling, swearing and anger that came forth. This turned in to them wanting to set up about 25 yards from us to ruin our hunt. After calmer heads prevailed, he asked if I would be willing to move to another spot a few hundred yards away and I said I was fine with that as he was the one that showed me the spots in the first place. While I was picking up, we began talking a little bit about how we both wanted very badly to bury the hatchet and put all this behind us. I was so happy to hear him say those words and I really hope that we can work everything out. I don't expect things to return to normal but if we can just get back to speaking terms and all that, I would be so happy. He is really a great guy and much like me, lives to hunt and takes it very seriously.
I just wanted to share this experience with everyone because while hunting is very important to most of us on here, it isn't worth ruining lifelong friendships over. I have learned my lesson the hard way and hope that I can make amends with my friend and his dad. Thanks again "sneff" and I really hope we can work things out...