Dumos

Last night a few army buddies and I went on a 16 mile hike through the Coronado National Forest into the Huachuca mountains (AZ) near the mexican border. We wore headlamps as we trekked along. We came to our pre-planned rest area at 0130 and bedded down for a few hours. There were 2 of us carrying. At about 0330 we heard foot steps and saw flashlight movement below us (we were on a ridge line). We jumped up, grabbed the guns, and the friend with the other gun moved left and I moved to the right behind a small tree. The person with the flash light stopped and stood there. A buddy of mine whistled to the guy and said stop, identify yourself (we were in the mountains where the coyotes, drug runners and people smugglers, frequently cross). I heard my friend click off his safety. What seemed like forever, the person with the flashlight yelled up to us asking if we were americans. We responed who wants to know. He then finally responded with Border Patrol. The feeling of relief that came over all of us was incredible. Only when my buddy quit shining his sure fire light in the guys eyes did he realize what was going on. There actually turned out to be two of them. We exchanged IDs and they relayed the story of how they tracked us for several hours because they saw our head lamps from the border patrol office several KM down from the mountain. We had broken through the brush when we came to the end of one trail and went looking for a trail several hundred meters away. They said they were glad we had weapons. They turned out to be really nice and gave us some electrolyte drink mixes to ensure we didn't become a heat casualty.

Overall it was my first experience drawing my weapon on anyone let alone a federal officer. But they told us we did the right thing and they should have ID themselves earlier.

Edit: I should have been a little more specific, gun was drawn but not pointed at the approaching person. A few people commented to me about it before I realized what they had been thinking. It was dark, someone was approaching our camp which was about 50 meters off the trail and did not call out to us. I errored on the side of caution.