Shot at while Camping, Long Version.

[Music] [Music] hi Robin field today and I'm going to tell you a story but before I even get to that there's something I want to cover you saw that cardboard box well here's one even better a phone book over here is somebody impromptu target that they were generous enough to leave for the rest of us we're in an area where a lot of people like to come out here and target you the reason they come here is because there was another area like this about three miles back that you can't go anymore because due to all the letter it got closed I'm pretty sure this area will get closed soon enough the thing with all this litter is it goes back to when I was in hunter education class when I was just a little kid one of the test questions was the biggest reason for anti hunter sentiment is and the answer you're supposed to check is hunter misconduct this is misconduct now these people were not hunters they're just chowderheads with guns but still we all get lumped together this is the kind of thing that gets your hunting and shooting areas closed everybody please pick up after yourselves okay that having been said let's get to today's topic I'm going to tell the long version of a story that I usually tell the short version of and that is the time I was camping with two friends of mine Bob and Joe and some assailants fired at us now this comes with all the normal disclaimer but I have to add a couple of them first being that we are not in the area where it happened we're not even in the same state where it happened but the terrain here is close enough that it makes the point secondly this story the reason I tell the short version is because the long version is really boring and anticlimactic but so many people wanted to hear it here we are and the third is sometimes you'll hear me say I've been in a couple of citizen involved shootings I have this is not one of them okay that having been said what happened was we were out rabbit hunting and we made a long loop around area and now we were coming back to where the pickup was and so we get back to the pickup and we're reloading magazines refilling canteens and basically I was just sitting next to the pickup in a lawn chair well at that point I look way out here about 800 meters away and I can see a pickup going down one lane dirt road that goes through the sagebrush and I can see that there's people in the back and at least a couple of them have long guns now they're far enough away I can't tell if it's rifles or shotguns or what and there's four to six people there it was far enough away that I couldn't really tell okay well they go behind a little bit of a hill and I know where the road comes out and so in about one minute they'll come out and I can see the vehicle well a minute goes by and they didn't come out they stopped over there not a cause for alarm where lots of people go target shooting and cutting and so forth so I'm sitting there in the lawn chair and a couple of bullets fly past now when you're in the Marine Corps and you shoot for qualification being down in butts and having bullets flying over here his partner process so I'm familiar with the sound and as the bullets flew over ahead of tweetybird moment where that sounded like a that was that was a bullet going over my head and I grabbed my rifle and ran around behind the only cover I had picked up well as I'm running behind the pickup as soon as I get behind it I see coming from the front of the pickup is Bob and as he comes running right toward me it's interesting the things you notice in situations like this first thing I noticed is didn't have his gun with him well he'd been out doing something and left his gun unattended he figured getting behind cover was more important than going and grabbing it okay well a couple of more bullets go by us and a few seconds go by and I become aware that Joe is still standing out there and I can hear him dinking around with some of his gear he's oblivious to what's going on and so I say to him hey Joe you better get down we're taking fire now those are my exact words and exactly how I said it I can't repeat his reply to me but basically it was he told me he didn't believe me it's interesting the things you remember I didn't say anything to him but I remember so clearly just shrugging and thinking okay well I'm down here behind pick up and I'm looking can't see anything I'm looking around the back the tailgate can't see anything I never saw any person never saw any smoke not that you would never saw a glint of sunlight off of rifle barrel but these bullets are going past us now it's difficult to judge such things but based on the sound it seemed like there are about 10 or 15 feet over our head and I heard a couple of bullets hit the ground in ricochet but again it didn't sound like they were all that close maybe 10 20 30 feet away it's really hard to tell and they fired a total of about 15 or 20 shots well while Bob and I are back here and these bullets are flying by about two three four shots after I talked to Joe he comes running around the front of the pickup and it looked like this okay maybe that's not exactly what it looked like but he came around the front of the pickup with his eyes as wide as saucers and the first thing I noticed was he didn't bring his rifle with him so here's the three of us behind the only cover we have the pickup while there's about a half dozen people out there most if not all of them are armed at least one of them is shooting at us and the only one of us that has a firearm is me and I've got a Ruger 10/22 similar to this one and I've got a 25 shot magazine in it but that was the only 25 shot mag I owned at the time the only other magazine that had the original 10 shot in my pouch and I had my steyr GB nine-millimeter with an 18 shot magazine in it and one extra mag in my pouch I felt a little under gunned well while we're there behind the pickup four or five six more rounds go over and then the shooting stops then between 1 & 2 minutes later we see them drive away the same direction they driven in as if everything was fine and that's what happened now there's a bunch of questions that come up and before I get to those one other thing when it comes to litterbugs shotgun shooters are the worst ok the question is first of all this sounds like a hunting accident why am I so sure that they were shooting at us intentionally okay we were about 10 miles away from the closest crossroad that you could even begin to call a town the idea that about a half dozen people load up all their guns drive out the middle of nowhere shoot 20 rounds and then go home that doesn't even make sense also they had 360 degrees they could have shot but they chose to shoot the one degree that's directly at us that doesn't seem likely that it's an accident and then we saw them driving in they had to have seen us we were in the wide open sitting next to a full-size f150 and the pickup we had was not dark blue like this one it was fire engine red they saw us they were shooting at us intentionally I have no idea why well that brings up the question if they were shooting at us intentionally why didn't they hit us well based on the sound I could hear I'm pretty sure they were shooting a 22 long rifle from a distance of more last 300 meters now a 22 will go that far and it's deadly at that distance but there's a lot of drop when you shoot at that distance you need to elevate quite a bit the thing is a lot of amateurs really overestimate the drop and so when they need to elevate about like this they end up elevating about like this and that's why the bullets went about ten feet over our heads at least that's the nearest I can figure now the next question of course is did I shoot back no why because although given a couple of minutes to think about it it became obvious they were shooting at us intentionally while it was happening I couldn't be certain of that now to shoot back and have any legitimacy as a self-defense shooting requires at least in the state that this occurred in that you reasonably believe you're in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm well I certainly believe that as bullets were whizzing right over my head but there was zero physical evidence to back that up the bullets and shell casings wouldn't matter because the entire place is littered with those and so to shoot back I might have hit one of them and I wouldn't have had any physical evidence to back up a self-defense case and yes you really do have to think about things like that while you're being shot at now the final question that comes up all the time is well did we call the police and the answer is no in that area there was no cell signal not only that call the police and tell them what that people that were so far away that I couldn't even tell you what gender they were shot at us and there's zero physical evidence to back it up there was nothing to tell the police not only that and I hope no one takes offense to this but I've seen it happen at that time we were the big city out-of-towners in this little rural area and when you're in that position and you have a problem with the locals and then you have to deal with local law enforcement the out-of-towners usually get the short end of that stick so that's pretty much the entirety of the time we were rabbit hunting and got shot at and I like to tell the short version of this because it really illustrates points like situational awareness and a couple of others and you can see my reluctance to tell the long version because it's really just not very interesting but for those who asked to see it there it is and thanks for watching [Music]

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Views: 973,702

Rating: 4.90204 out of 5

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Id: _2wWktUH71I

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2017