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Thief Caught Yesterday : Warning for those in Zone 9 Black River

3K views 28 replies 22 participants last post by  gregtpal 
#1 ·
So I was lucky enough to get out with my brother and father the past couple of days for permit shotgun. On Thursday, my father and I climbed out of our stands to get lunch down the road but he (accidentally) left his bag hanging up about 15' in the tree on a peg. Rather than setting up his climber again to get the bag, we figured it'd be fine for 45 mins since we were the only ones in the lot when we walked in a few hours prior. Man, were we wrong. So we get back in the lot and see another vehicle. As we're walking down the edge of the field toward the trail that takes us back to the area that we were hunting, I see a guy with an orange hat walking through the woods about 20 yards in from a main trail, taking the road less traveled through a briar patch. Something didn't feel right so I told my old man to hang on the edge of the field and check the guy out from a distance to ensure that he wasn't carrying his bag out while I went back to check the tree that it was in. Sure enough, I get back to the tree and the bag is gone. I call my father and he says that the guy doesn't have it. I tell him to look closer and the guy was hiding it on the other side of his bag to block my old man's view. My dad identifies the bag and asks the guy about it and his reply is "Well, I've had stuff stolen out of here too so I was going to use this one. It's a nice bag." Now I'm not one to bust balls for no reason but if that's the best excuse that you can come up with, you're not too swift and not the king of decision making and certainly not the kind of guy that I'm happy to share public land with when their are kids out there too. Unfortunately, it robbed us of about 2 hours of afternoon hunting but, luckily, we recovered my father's bag which had all of his equipment (knives, mag light, etc.) in it. I called the CO and they wrote this jerk up for who knows what but with all of the theft stories going on out there without recoveries, I wanted to make everyone aware of this guy in case you find yourself parked in the same lot as him one day. I didn't catch his name but he said he is from Rahway (idiots like this belong in the state pen. over there). He is about 50-60 years old, grey-white hair, with glasses. He drives a red 97-03 F-150 with Lariat pin-striping on it and has a handicap license plate starting with HZ. He tried getting sympathy from the CO by saying he needs to sit down because he has a bad leg but it certainly wasn't acting up as he speedily walked away from us carrying two bags and his climber (hopefully it was his climber) and certainly didn't stop him from using a climbing stand to get up a tree to steal my father's bag. The other thing that irked me was that he was only there for a total of 45 minutes and was already on his way back toward the lot so I don't even think was going to hunt, he may have showed up just to steal some stuff. So the moral of the story is, keep an eye out for this guy when you're out there with friends/family and regardless of whether you're leaving for 2 minutes or 2 hours be sure to pack up all of your stuff and take it with you so you don't wind up in a similar situation. Happy Hunting.
 
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#7 ·
How the hell did he know the bag was even there in that short of time??? WTF was this guy eyeballing you, your dad and your stuff all morning. It's not that easy to find stuff in the woods even when you know where it is. What an effing scumbag. Thanks for the heads up!
 
#8 ·
It boils my blood just reading that story. Well, I sure hope they knock on this guy's door everytime someone reports something stolen there from now on. You can bet money this wasn't the first time and probably won't be the last time he pulled that. And I sure hope he lost his hunting license! I makes me mad people are actually caught doing crap like this, and it doesn't seem like they lose their license. To me, this guy needs to lose his license for years. It's not like it was a "mistake" as in "opps, I climbed all the way up this tree, a bag that wasn't mine just happened to fall on my shoulder, I got down and accidentally snuck out of the woods on an out-of-the-way trail so noone saw me" mistake. He purposefully climbed a tree to steal stuff (now it has me thinking that my camera I put up in a tree wasn't as safe as I thought).

This is just an out-right thief. Why they are allowed to still hunt after getting caught I don't know. Anyway, I don't know if he lost his license or not, I hope he did.
 
#12 ·
I'm with you on this one and that was the goal, get his license pulled for at least a year. I wanted to get back in the woods hunting, but I thought the time was well worth it to make sure that scum like this isn't out here hunting with all of us good guys next year.
 
#17 ·
I actually called the police first. They came out but said that we'd all have to go to court and it'd be my word against his since we took possession of it before police arrived and they didn't catch him with our property. The recommendation was to call the state and turn it over to the CO would would more than likely cite him, which is exactly what happened.
 
#16 ·
It just amazes me that a person could find a backpack up in a tree, climb up and steal it and be on his way out of there 45min after you left it. I used to leave my climber at the base of a tree after an evening hunt when I was coming back the next morning until one of my friends had his stolen that way. We came out of the woods and nobody else was parked near by when we went back in the next morning it was gone.
 
#23 ·
Years ago I was sitting in my stand,right at dark I hear a guy coming down a tree with a climbing stand not that far from me. It was the first time I was hunting the area so I figured I would pick his brain. I left my pack and bow at the base of my tree and walked towards where I heard him and called to him.I got no response. When I got back to my stuff a few minutes later. ...all gone..my bow and pack...several thousand dollars worth of stuff... The scumer stumble across my stuff in the dark and ran off with it. Bow...range finder..swarovski binoculars cell phone car keys...and lots of other stuff in my pack I still cry over it.
 
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