Birchwood, Wis. ? As several deer hunters made their way through the woods of northern Wisconsin, they were startled to come upon a stranger in their tree stand. But what happened next was even more astonishing.

Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn’t stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead and three wounded, authorities said. One of the injured hunters died Monday.

Police identified the shooter as Chai Vang, 36, a hunter from St. Paul, Minn., who is a member of the Twin Cities’ Hmong community. While authorities do not know why he allegedly opened fire, there have been previous clashes between Southeast Asian and white hunters in the region.

Locals in the Birchwood area, about 120 miles northeast of the Twin Cities, have complained that the Hmong, refugees from Laos, do not understand the concept of private property and hunt wherever they see fit.

Annual hunt

The six killed and two injured were part of a group of 14 or 15 who made their opening-weekend trip to Robert Crotteau’s 400-acre property an annual tradition.

The visit was like any other until around noon Sunday. When two or three hunters spotted a man in their hunting platform in a tree on Crotteau’s land, they radioed back to the rest of the party at a cabin nearby, and asked who should be there.

“The answer was nobody should be in the deer stand,” Sheriff James Meier said.

One of the men approached the intruder and asked him to leave, as Crotteau and the others in the cabin hopped on their all-terrain vehicles and headed to the scene.

“The suspect got down from the deer stand, walked 40 yards, fiddled with his rifle. He took the scope off his rifle, he turned and he opened fire on the group,” Meier said.

Brent Good, a friend of one of the hunters who was shot and killed in a rampage Sunday, lights candles during a vigil for the victims at Bluegill Rest Park in Birchwood, Wis. Five hunters were killed Sunday and a sixth died Monday after a confrontation over a tree stand.

One of the men who was shot called for help on his radio, but it was too late. The gunman fired again, hitting the people who had just arrived on ATVs.

The gunman was “chasing after them and killing them,” Deputy Tim Zeigle said. “He hunted them down.”

The scene Meier described was one of carnage, the bodies strewn around 100 feet apart. Rescuers from the cabin piled the living onto their vehicles and headed out of the thick woods.

“They grabbed who they could grab and got out of there because they were still under fire,” Meier said.

Someone in the group wrote the suspect’s hunting license number, which hunters wear on their clothing, by tracing it on a dirty vehicle, Meier said.

Killed Sunday were Crotteau, 42; his son Joey, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; and Jessica Willers, 27.

Denny Drew, 55, died Monday, and two others remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

Arrest not the end

The shooter took off into the woods and eventually came upon two other hunters who had not heard about the shootings. Vang told them he was lost, and they offered him a ride to a warden’s truck, Meier said. He was then arrested; authorities plan to bring charges against him later this week. Investigators said Vang was cooperating.

In Minnesota, the arrest has left some Hmong citizens in his hometown fearful of a backlash. About 24,000 Hmong (pronounced “mung”) live in St. Paul, the highest concentration of any U.S. city.

In Wisconsin, the shooting has provoked a different kind of tension. “It’s pathetic. They let all these foreigners in here, and they walk all over everybody’s property,” said Jim Arneberg, owner of the Haugen Inn in nearby Haugen.