Back in 2000, I lived in Grand Forks and my fiancé (now ex) had just started hunting. So I thought I'd make it easy for her and get us deer tags in 3B1 where my family's land lies and we wouldn't have to deal with other hunters. Wouldn't you know it, my stepfather waited until deer opener to sell his calves. This generally runs all the deer out of the pasture and they aren't seen again for a few days and we really only had opening weekend to hunt, not to mention it was going to take all Saturday to catch the calves. Damnit anyway, he's pulled the surprise cattle roundup on me a few times when I've gone home for hunting or some other activity. Nonetheless, a cow chasing I go and thought "oh well, we can always go up to the Corps land by Williston on Sunday morning, I know for sure she can fill her doe tag there in the morning and I can also fill my antlered tag". Not the nice leisure hunt I was hoping for her to experience on her first deer tag, but such is life.
So we get up early and head for the river bottoms and a honey hole of a deer spot, get there early and just like clockwork the deer showed up about 10 minutes after legal shooting. Bang-bang, and we were done deer hunting. At times I can be good like that. :;:rockitBoth deer were down about 300 yds from the nearest trail in about 10 inches of fresh snow, so we walk out and I field dress hers without a hitch before I turn to my buck laying some 20 ft away. Now it was pretty cool out that morning and my nose was stuffy so being bent over gutting my buck I was sucking air as I tried to get the urine bladder between the freshly split pelvis. Grrrr, this darn thing is just being difficult as I got frustrated and gave it a yank. Yep, the split pelvis poked a hole in the bladder and a steady stream of deer urine shot straight out like a mini-water cannon and traveled the 3 ft right into my open mouth.
For the love of God, we were traveling light and I didn't have a single drop of water to rinse that piss taste out of my mouth. I'll let you use your imagination as to how much it sucked to have to shove handfuls of snow into my mouth and wait for it to melt so I could rinse. Uggh! After finally getting my mouth rinsed out we drug the deer out to the pickup. Luck seemed to smile on us as a flock of grouse flew over our heads and roosted in some trees back across the field.
Feeling fortunate to have brought the shotguns with us, we decided to head back out after the grouse once the deer were loaded up and I had found some more water to do a better job of rinsing out my mouth. We strolled happily across a wide open stubble field filled with a fresh 6-10 inches of snow all while still wearing full orange jackets and hats. When we were about 300 yds from the pickup, I noticed a handful of deer running straight toward us at full speed. All of a sudden, shots rang out from the trees about 150 yds up the road from my pickup. Nah...no way in hell anyone would be shooting at those deer I thought, they are WAY, WAY too close to us and still closing the distance.
SOB! The puffs of snow began flying up in the air about 50 yds from us as more shots rang out and the deer were still running towards us, or basically cross 60-70 yds between us and the shooter in the trees. Whoever this was has got to be totally blind to not see us in full orange standing in a 100% white field! I yelled at the ex to hit the dirt and I opened up with my shotgun to flare the deer away from us (not aiming at them, just trying to make noise). Finally, and I mean FINALLY the shooter in the trees ran out of ammo. At this point I am left a little steamed as I picked my now crying ex out of the snow to make sure she's OK and I start running towards my pickup. I am HOT and was for damn sure going to find out who was shooting at us.
Despite my yelling the shooter ended up jumping in an older Chevy Blazer and lit out of the area in a hurry as I got close, maybe 80 yds. So I turned to go back to the pickup and meet up with the ex. She was still very shaken when she got in the truck and was asking WTH was going on. I said, I have no idea but we'll find out as they just went down a dead end!
Yep, we sure did catch up to them and blocked their path as they came back out of the dead end. Turned out it was some late-thirties to mid 40s jackass teaching his teen-aged boys how to road hunt. There were a couple of them in the vehicle and while he never ID'd which was the one shooting at me, I gave him a pretty good idea of what I thought about his hunting technique.
That was certainly one of the more interesting days in the field, and I bet we were all done and on the road home by 9:30.
But he left us with lots of interesting stories like that. 
