A Wyoming outdoorsman said he’s angry and baffled over why someone was shameless enough to steal his blind while he was pronghorn hunting in Natrona County.
Nic Buxman told Cowboy State Daily he suspects at least two people he saw in a “newer, black four-door Chevy pickup” last weekend were the ones who stole the blind while he and his brother were off hunting in another spot.
The blind, valued at about $220, was a Father’s Day gift from his wife and children, said Buxman, who lives in the Afton area.
Financially, it won’t be much of a hardship, he said. But the incident shook him because it was such an egregious violation of the time-honored unwritten hunters’ code of conduct.
“That’s what I’m really pissed about, the principle of the thing,” he said.
The Blind Was Just Gone
Buxman’s family enjoys pronghorn hunting in a remote part of Natrona County. He and his brother went last week for an early-season archery hunt “that was really more of a scouting trip,” he said.
The entire family hopes to return for rifle season next month.
Buxman and his brother set up a tent camp about 800 yards from a water hole they hoped would attract pronghorn. They set up the blind, about the size of a small tent, near the water hole.
The blind was made from material that allows occupants a full view of the outside world while keeping them invisible on the inside.
After sitting in the blind for a while with no luck, they spotted a group of pronghorn about 1,500 yards away and decided to change tactics.
“We decided to go on a spot-and-stalk hunt,” he said, referring to the tactic of trying to sneak within bow-shot distance of the pronghorn.
That kept them occupied for a few hours, although they didn’t get a shot. They returned to camp, bypassing the spot where the blind was.
Their plan was to rest in camp and then return to the waterhole for an evening sit in the blind.
But when they got to the waterhole, the blind was gone.
They had tied the blind’s lines to stakes in the ground and secured one line to a large rock in case of high winds.
“They (the thieves) had pulled up all of the stakes and pulled the line off the rock, without moving the rock," Buxman said.
Black Chevy Pickup
He recalled that they’d seen the black Chevy driving in the vicinity of their camp occupied by what appeared to be “a younger man and his girlfriend.”
The truck had a temporary tag on it, indicating it had recently been purchased, Buxman said.
“It was a Wyoming tag, so I figured, ‘Oh, cool, he’s local’ and didn’t think anything of it,” he said.
Later, “a couple of other guys who had been in the area texted me and said they’d seen that same pickup,” he said.
He also got a report that a black Chevy pickup stopped at a local tire shop for flat tire repair, “and the tire shop guy said they (the truck’s occupants) were kind of sketchy people,” he said.
Buxman said he reported the incident to a Wyoming Game and Fish warden.
“I was just letting the warden know, ‘Hey, there’s somebody out here stealing people’s stuff,’” he said.
Wardens Baffled
Retired game wardens told Cowboy State Daily they were baffled by the incident. They’d never dealt with hunting blind theft during their careers.
“I never really had an issue” with theft between hunters, said Benge Brown, who was a warden in the Rawlins and Thermopolis areas.
“Around Rawlins, it was mostly public land," and hunters seemed to respect one another’s property, he said.
“Around Thermopolis it was mostly private land. And if somebody had a blind setup on private property, access to it would be limited,” he added.
Brad Gibb said he recalled only an occasional theft of “a nice set of antlers, maybe taken out of a camp or the back of somebody’s pickup.”
But the theft of hunting gear and equipment was never much of a problem, said Gibb, who was a warden in Fremont County.
“Everybody kind of watches out for everybody else’s stuff. I don’t think that, generally, people in the outdoors are the type to steal other people’s things,” said Gibb. “I hope that it (the theft of Buxman’s blind) is not a sign of the times.”
Tim Eicher of Cody was a federal and state game warden.
“You have bad actors in every walk of life,” he said. “But somebody stealing an antelope blind? No, I never heard of anything like that.”
Eicher said most of the complaints he got were about “people ruining other people’s hunts” with such antics as roaring into a hunt area on an ATV.
‘Didn’t Get The Memo’
Buxman said he won’t let the theft ruin the rest of his and his family’s hunting season.
His brother filled his pronghorn tag with an archery kill Sunday, and the plan is still to bring the rest of the family back in a few weeks for rifle hunting, Buxman said.
He still can’t figure out what would possess somebody to steal his blind.
“If you wanted to come sit in my blind to hunt, I would have let you come sit in it. Just don’t steal it," he said.
Buxman is a hunter education instructor.
“I try to teach my students to be respectful of others,” he said. “Those people (who took the blind) apparently didn’t get the memo."
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
