On September 2, 2018, Hunter Hollingsworth spent the day on his farm in Camden, Tennessee. Dove season began the day before, and he had some friends over to hunt. That evening, he looked up and saw a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agent and a Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) officer converging on his location, but Hollingsworth wasn’t nervous. He was angry.

According to a report later filed by FWS Special Agent Jesse Fielder, Hollingsworth approached the officers “in a confrontational manner,” with a shotgun still in one hand and a beer in the other. Hollingsworth “started cursing at SA Fielder about SA Fielder being on his dove field.” Even after Fielder took Hollingsworth’s gun and handcuffed him, Hollingsworth continued to curse at the officers for harassing him: “I hadn’t done a damn thing wrong, y’all fuck with me every time I damn hunt.”

Looking back, Hollingsworth tells Reason, “Some of the things I said, some of my actions, I’m not proud of.” But he says he felt backed into a corner: At least seven or eight times, Hollingsworth says he had spotted wildlife officers on his land without a warrant. Usually they look around for violations, sometimes they take pictures or videos.