The case of the missing game bag - What say you?

[LongWayAround]

I always think about those things when I have to leave a load at the truck and go back out, but I really don't think most people are going to do that.

Some shithead driving down the road who's tired of striking out... maybe.

Two guys who get to hunt a lot... probably not.

I'm thinking it was an animal.

I did have a squirrel (probably) steal my ivories one time. I had just popped them out in my backyard and set them on a cinder block when a guy called me who wanted to buy a truck. I dropped what I was doing and went to meet him, sold the truck for cash, and went home. No ivories when I got back.

 

[JK47]

Can you imagine my disappointment when I went back to the trailhead that ain’t really a trailhead and the meat I snuck out from under y’all that I hid down the hill was gone? The wife was really mad cause I told her I was bringing a shoulder home.

Regardless of how your meat ended up down that hill, I’m glad you found it.

 

[idelkslayer]

If it was a bear there would have been holes or tears in the bag and drag marks somewhere along the way. Those guys hid your bag of meat. They may have been planning to hide all of it but you showed up before they could do more. They probably had no intention of taking it for themselves and were probably trying to scare you out of hunting the area in the future.

 

[EdP]

It seems to me a bear could only carry off a game bag with a shoulder using it's mouth. That would leave teeth marks on the bag and meat. If no teeth marks it was carried by hand. Either the guide or bigfoot.

 

[NRA4LIFE]

If it was a bear there would have been holes or tears in the bag and drag marks somewhere along the way. Those guys hid your bag of meat. They may have been planning to hide all of it but you showed up before they could do more. They probably had no intention of taking it for themselves and were probably trying to scare you out of hunting the area in the future.

I tend to think it was something like this. We have a marauding bear in our neighborhood (large lots) that get into people's garbage when they set it out the night before garbage day. We've had it happen twice so we don't put it out until garbage day. When ours was attacked, the damned thing drug it off and it was torn to hell. One time several hundred yards onto my neighbor's property.

Those guys were up to no good me thinks.

 

[cnelk]

No guide is going to get caught with just a shoulder in his truck.

That’s illegal. And they wouldn’t risk their license

 

[Rich M]

Crazy stuff.

In future dont leave anything of value where other folks can see it and mess with it.

Dont go acusing the guides or trying to catch them “getting antsy”. Just learn from it.

 

[bevance]

No guide is going to get caught with just a shoulder in his truck.

That’s illegal. And they wouldn’t risk their license

Fair.

Might be a stretch to say no guides have never done anything illegal though!

 

[bevance]

Crazy stuff.

In future dont leave anything of value where other folks can see it and mess with it.

Dont go acusing the guides or trying to catch them “getting antsy”. Just learn from it.

Not really trying to catch the guides in the moment pal.

Just a reflection after the fact.

 

[Wrench]

 

[Green-Up]

View attachment 1079338

I knew I couldn't be the only one that got BOAL vibes from this thread...

 

[Chris in TN]

I think hunters tend to be better than average people on the decency scale, but it only takes one bad apple, so to speak.

When I was a kid we hunted west of Craig for mule deer and my dad shot a buck, gutted it, packed the cavity with clean snow, dragged it close to the BLM road, went to get help loading it, and when we came back it had simply vanished from a location where I don't *think* he could have simply misplaced it or forgot where he'd been.

Same year - my first western hunt and there'd been enough snow to really kick off the migration of a TON of deer - we also saw several small bucks that I think people shot, walked up to, saw their small antlers, and left to rot. Of course by the time we find them we don't know how long they'd been there, so there was nothing we could do. It's possibly they were shot and lost, but none were in really thick places. Who knows? People suck.

 

[mike.adams.467]

If it was a bear there would have been holes or tears in the bag and drag marks somewhere along the way. Those guys hid your bag of meat. They may have been planning to hide all of it but you showed up before they could do more. They probably had no intention of taking it for themselves and were probably trying to scare you out of hunting the area in the future.

Not necessarily. A bear could carry off a front shoulder, bag and all, without leaving a trail. I had a neighbor several years ago who hung 2 antelope (whole but skinned) in game bags on a meat pole. Sometime during the night a grizzly pulled them both down and carried them off. He found one game bag several hundred yards from his cabin. I feel certain the shoulder became bear food.

 

[bevance]

Not necessarily. A bear could carry off a front shoulder, bag and all, without leaving a trail. I had a neighbor several years ago who hung 2 antelope (whole but skinned) in game bags on a meat pole. Sometime during the night a grizzly pulled them both down and carried them off. He found one game bag several hundred yards from his cabin. I feel certain the shoulder became bear food.

We did find the game bag of a lifetime with the shoulder in it and it wasn’t bear food.