Here's one for the bowfishermen. The summer after I graduated high school (a long, long time ago) I was walking the bank of the Red River looking for gar about 25 miles below the Lake Texoma dam. Kept seeing a helicopter flying up and down the river, but being 18 years old, I was in my own little world and didn't pay it much attention. A couple of miles downstream, I decided to follow a creek into the woods. After following the creek for a while, a bridge crossed the creek and I decided I would walk the dirt/gravel road back to my car. I was walking along and saw the helicopter again, hovering out in front of me. Next thing I know, a state trooper car comes barreling around the corner, gravel flying everywhere, does the sideways skid-thing, just like in the movies, and stops maybe twenty feet from me. The driver is glaring at me through his open window. The passenger side trooper jumps out of his side and levels his shotgun at me over the roof of the car. The barrel of that gun was like looking down into a 55 gallon oil drum. My pucker factor went right off the scale. I later learned that this is what they call a felony stop. The driver starts asking all kinds of questions, who am I ? What am I doing out here? I couldn't squeak out an answer, so I just lifted up my bowfishing rig and pointed at it. Then he asked me if I knew where there were any caves around there. Looking back, I don't think that there are any caves within two hundred miles of that area, but all I managed to say, in a very meek voice, was, "No." I think they finally realized that I was no threat in any sense of the word and relaxed a little. The railroad tunnel-sized shotgun got pointed somewhere else and they explained to me that they were looking for some escaped prisoners from the Oklahoma side of the river. Somebody had told them that one of the escapees liked to hide in some caves in that area. Anyway, they gave me a ride back to my car, probably just to get me out of the way of their manhunt. As I was tossing my bow into the back of my 1970 Ford Maverick, I heard one of them say, "Good thing we didn't catch him down on the river, he'd a shot us in the *** with that bow." In all honesty, after that felony stop, I'm just proud that I didn't wet my pants.
