I do believe I’ve found two people who truly deserve each other. What’s the old saying, “The couple that barks together stays together?”

January 14, the second to last day of our archery deer season in Missouri found me on a small parcel in west St. Louis county. A recent ice storm had snarled plans to finish my season at Devil’s Backbone Outfitters. Travel was ill-advised so I hunted locally on a property where my friend Karl had been seeing good bucks. Though the property owner was interested in us thinning out the herd, a few of his neighbors weren’t. Listen to the antics these anti-hunters employed to ruin our hunt, particularly those of the couple next door.

Ridiculous, huh?

In these people’s minds, I’m sure they believe themselves to be courageous agitators challenging state sanctioned murder.

The reality? They’re breaking the law.

The practicality of the situation was a little more complicated than that however. As I mentioned in the video, I could foresee a local police officer sympathizing with their incredulous, “What? We were just getting our dog out for a little exercise officer. He loves it when we bark with him. It’s cathartic for our chakra too. Our yoga instructor even said so!” Further complicating matters, my property owner was out of town for a few months. I didn’t want to cause a conflict in his neighborhood without his consult. Maybe he’d want to me charge headlong against these people, maybe he wouldn’t want the hassle. It wasn’t for me to decide in that moment, so I observed and shot footage.

Karl was hunting with me that day and did see some mature bucks on his side of the property, but they spooked because of these people before coming into range.

I hunted this same property the following day, January 15, the last window of opportunity to fill my buck tag for the season. Instead of parking my Jeep near the road in plain view of the neighbors, I had my buddy Jay drop me off behind the house. He only stopped the truck for 20 seconds for me to roll out with my gear before heading back out of the driveway. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a member of the A-Team than I did during that hunt.

I didn’t kill anything that evening. I did see one big deer just over a different (and hopefully more reasonable) neighbor’s property line. During the off-season, I’ll work with my landowner to address the behavior of his neighbors so that come September 2017, I’m prepared to take a deer out of there. Perhaps for a little punctuation to this saga, I’ll strap that deer to the safari rack on top of my Jeep after field dressing it. Maybe crank a little, “Country Boy Can Survive” as I leave the neighborhood? Or maybe, as an homage to the neighbors, I ought to hit play on, “Who Let the Dogs Out?“