My buddy Ron and I were about 15, when after school, we decided to take out the 22 and a shotgun, to shoot anything that moved, chickadees, red squirrels,etc. There was snow on the ground. It had drifted, so between 6 inches to a foot and a half. But this afternoon, it was clear and the temp wasn't too bad. Being teens, our coats were sweatshirts and our boots were tennis shoes. Well, we're out in the woods, when I look to a clearing on the edge of the woods to see a man running down the hill towards us. I took off, running past Ron, and said, RUN! He didn't know why, but he ran. As we are running, I told him, "somebody's chasing us". We ran and kept running. Every time we looked back, this guy was still coming. Up hills, down hills, across a creek, he was still coming. We thought, man, this guy is a maniac. This went on for a few miles, and to make it worse, we were heading AWAY from town. We came up a hill, and went a little ways, then I looked back and saw the man coming up over the hill. I put the 22 against the tree and took a bead on his chest. I was just about to pull the trigger, and Ron pushed the gun down and said, "what are you doing?,lets' just keep running". So we did. Ya gotta remember, at this point, we're exhausted, and scared shitless from being chased by a crazy man. Soon, we no longer saw him behind us, so we slowed down, but continued to take the long way around and back to town. We got to a back road, walking down the road we heard a vehicle coming up around the bend. (still, a ways away though) We spread apart and went up over a little bank. I told Ron to stop and walk backwards, staying in our own tracks. Back down the bank and across the road. We laid under a couple of little pine trees along the edge of the road. They stopped their truck right there and looked at our tracks, talked about us going up over the bank, got back in the truck and took off. We were panting, laying in the snow, about 10 feet from them at the time. We were sh@#^ing ouselves! Thinking, what the hell?, there's a group of crazy guys out to get us. As we got closer to town, coming in, down the railroad tracks. We saw the town cop,pull down to an opening by the tracks, so we laid flat, (In the snow again) His spotlight swept back and forth a few times, then he got back in his car and left. We're thinking, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Finally, we got to my place, hours after dark, safe at last, we thought! My mom was like "Where the hell have you been? I thought you two had an accident with the guns, so I called the cop, and he called the game warden. The original "crazy guy" WAS, the game warden, and my mom said he was coming to the house in a little bit to get some info on us. WHAT? The game protector started chasing us, to check us out, he lived right there. Then after the cop call, they put 2 and 2 together. His neighbor, also got in on the search, mine and Ron's gym teacher. Anyway, he came to the house, gave us a stern talking to. Ron and I never mentioned the part about almost shooting him. The next day in gym class, our teacher walked up to Ron and I, grinned, and said, "I heard you two are going out for cross-country next year. I said, nope, we had enough of that cross-country stuff.
