Reading this gives me a warm feeling.
Thieves are stupid. Had something funny happy last Thursday. Long story short, three meth heads had burglarized a cabin on the river and they were using a woods road on our land to retrieve their bounty. A neighbor had called the warden on a guy who said he was squirrel hunting with an AR and a tote sac. Warden shows up and arrests one of the doped up dummies and the other fled in his truck but the third took off running through the woods. The law got the dogs after him and the intellectual giant decides he'll throw the dogs off by taking off his shoes and socks so the dogs won't have any scent to follow. The fool ran through the woods for a couple hours barefoot - and the terrain isn't friendly at all - before he was caught. They had to let them dry out for a day or so before they could question them.