Particularly when an easement existed on his property for this purpose.
I guess there are few surveyors who haven't been threatened with or faced a shotgun or rifle. It can be pretty scary, particularly when you're a green member of a surveying party chain gang. Been there. Done that.
I've done a lot of hunting on public lands. -- I agree, there's a ~lot~ of irrational property owners out there.
So have I. When I was much, much younger I worked as a party chief for a civil engineering company. A lot of our jobs involved the initial survey and later the staking out of high tension power line easements over private property for a large power company. On more occasions than I can remember I was threatened with death or serious injury by very unhappy and very angry property owners, sometimes at gunpoint.
One lady I remember very well shoved a pistol in my chest while raving and screaming and vowing to kill me if I stepped on her property. Needless to say I didn't take that step, and she was later confined to a mental hospital on a judge's order. Although I understood their anger and sympathized with their situations I was caught in the middle and those confrontations were not pleasant to say the least.
I'm just glad I never had to confront Mr. Watson under those circumstances. The mentally ill lady had her finger on the trigger of her semiauto pistol while she pointed it at me but thank the good Lord she wasn't looney enough to pull it. Apparently Mr. Watson was.